Process Prototyping - A Low Temperature Model Of A Glass Pressing Process

The Institute for Machine Tools & Industrial Management (iwb) has a long tradition of investigating Rapid Prototyping technologies. Recently, this field was extended with Process Prototyping in order to build not only prototype parts or tools, but also to set up prototypes of complete technical and industrial processes. Process Prototyping involves modeling and investigating technical processes. In this article, an industrially-applied glass pressing process is used as an example to create a process model. Dimensional Analysis was chosen out of the variety of methods. The fundamental principles and boundary conditions related to the problem of modeling a real glass forming process are discussed.