Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Impact Podcast brought to you by PGTI University. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Sherry Connor and I am your host.
Good afternoon. We are here on the Clear Impact Podcast and we're in a series called windows and doors 301. And we're just deep diving into some topics that we feel like are going to be helpful, maybe interesting. I don't know, maybe. If you're sleepy, don't listen to this while you're driving. I have no idea how today's conversation is going to go, but I am very excited to be sitting with Ronnie Sopsich. Did I say it right?
[00:00:50] Speaker B: You did. Perfect.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Yay. So Ronnie is one of our engineers here, I think. I don't know. I just know he's the guy that knows everything about gloves.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Ok.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: So Ronnie, why don't you introduce yourself?
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Okay. Ron Sopcich is my name. I've got 30 years of experience in the glass industry. Most recently I've been in supply chain for the last four years. I'm on the strategic side of supply chain. So I'm on the front end of the contracts, pricing negotiations and setting up new suppliers and vetting new suppliers for multiple levers of opportunity and options for the company. My previous experience before supply chain was quality and engineering for several years and then also manufacturing leadership at different levels. Just at to be in the glass plant, mostly overcutting, tempering, Lamy was mostly my strong point. So like I said, 30 years, nine of the years with PGT and a little over 20 years with one of our other glass suppliers.
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Wow. Okay. So you know some stuff.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: Just a few things.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Nice. Well, we're not going to go Joe Rogan and have a three hour conversation because I don't have time for that. I know you don't either.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: That's good.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: But we do want to talk about this thing that I've heard because I've done a few glass plant tours now and it's called a recipe. And so obviously a recipe is a formula that you can repeat so that you want the same outcome. So if you think about I'm baking cookies, this is my recipe, what do I have to add to it? What do I take away from it? How do I get the desired result? And so what is a recipe when it comes to heat treating glass?
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Okay. A recipe is a set of parameters that are put into our tempering furnace for all the different glass types. Let it be coating tents or just standard clear.
Each recipe has thousands of parameter changes, opportunities for set points. So when an operator is running a tempering furnace, and they're going from different glass thicknesses or different glass types per load. They don't have to type in a bunch of parameters because there is no standard profile for each one of these. Each one has their own set of settings. So a recipe is a preloaded recipe that has all the standard parameters for each particular glass type. And when an operator loads the recipe, their goal is just to load and go, just like the old Easy bake oven, set it and forget it type thing.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:11] Speaker B: It's to be as simplified and user friendly as possible. So they can make a recipe adjustment from different glass types in a matter of seconds. And it's already loaded and programmed in there based off the best results for quality, for distortion, for bow. All those parameters are already in there. And those parameters are controlled. And the recipes are controlled by our engineering group. And the standard operator only deviates plus or minus 10% from the standard recipe settings to keep our control limits, upper and lower control limits within a certain tolerance. So if they're making adjustments that go beyond a standard tolerance, there's probably something wrong with the furnace. There's either a mechanical issue or something that's an issue that, you know, the outside temperature and ambient temperature could be affecting how the glass is tempering. So standard recipes are loaded and the operator have certain control limits they can and can't adjust. And that allows us to also keep our control plan within tolerance. What all modifications our operators are making.
[00:04:15] Speaker A: Okay, so it's complex.
[00:04:17] Speaker B: It's very complex.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: I knew it would be. And so what makes it different from one recipe to the next? So if I have, like blue glass and then I have bronze glass, can those be run at the same time or does that require a different recipe?
[00:04:30] Speaker B: They require different recipes. We run five or six different standard tents. 90% of what we run is gray, 5% of what we run is a bronze tent. And then the other 5% up is made up of blues and greens.
And to get that color in there, like a tent is the actual color, right? Like clear is a color, tint is a color.
[00:04:53] Speaker A: Right.
[00:04:54] Speaker B: Sometimes confused with low E coatings. Not at all the same. A tint is an actual color. So to get that color in that glass when it's made in the float process, standard clear float is made of silica, lime, and soda is pretty much the three main ingredients in a batch for making float glass. And to get the darker tints, you add cobalt and ash in different levels of that to get a darker or lighter color. And In a tempering world, the darker the tent, the higher the heat absorption. So your recipe parameters are completely different from a clear recipe to a gray recipe to a bronze to a blue to a green. And the difference can be like. For an example is a standard tent recipe cycle time is 100 seconds. Per recipe is its cycle. And when you go from tent to dark tent, a standard gray or bronze is a 10% deviation. So as you go darker, you take out 10 seconds down to 90 seconds.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:05:55] Speaker B: If you go blue to green, you actually have to take out 40%.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: So because of the heat absorption is so much higher in the darker tents. That's a great example of the difference. And then on coatings, which is low E, low E stands for low emissivity. And that's also known as soft sputter coating, which is our solar band 60s, which is double silver, and then our solar band 70s, which are triple silver. Same as cardinals 270 and 366. So the soft coatings, the whole point of the coating is to reflect radiant heat. So in a furnace that's made up of 60, 70% of radiant heating coils, when you're running it through the tempering furnace.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: It reflects the heat. So you have to have convection slash aspiration, which is known as heated air. You have to have heated air convection on the top of the glass to penetrate through the coating to temper the glass. If it was just radiant, radiant, which is the same as a toaster oven, Right. You electrify the heating coils, they light up red hot, and that's where you get the heat. Same as a tempering furnace, but clear recipes, that's fine. But with low emissivity and hard coatings, which are pyrolytic coatings, you need convection air to penetrate through the coating without burning it, and then allows you to temper that glass or heat treat it.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: Okay, I never even thought about that. Yes.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: And heat treating, there's two different types of recipes. We have heat strengthened, right, which is.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Two times annealed, and then we have tempered, right, which is four times annealed or two times the heat strengthened.
[00:07:33] Speaker B: The quick breakdown is annealed glass is glass that you can score, you can cut, you manipulate, you can control the breakage. It's about 2 to 400 psi, which is pounds per square inch. If I was to take a 1 inch by 12 inch piece of glass and put it on two fulcrum points and apply pressure in the center. How, however much pressure that takes is called pounds per square inch. For it to break.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: So a neoglass is 2 to 400 psi pounds per square inch. Okay. And heat strengthen is 4500 to 7500. So you're anywhere from 12 to 17 times stronger than annealed.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:10] Speaker B: And tempered is anything over 10,000 psi. Oh gosh. So it's 20 to 25 times stronger than annealed. We typically run our tempered about 12,500. Our heat strengthen is right in the middle of the parameter of the 4,500 to 7,500. We run right at 52 to 5,800 psi. So the recipes are different. And heat strengthen is meant for more of the impact world. So when you're breaking the laminated glass, you have larger shards. You're getting the strength and tension from the heat treated process, but it still holds together in larger pieces which when you're impacting it with a 2x4, it holds it together and allows it to not pass and prevents it from passing through. Tempered is actually quite a bit higher pounds per square inch compression and tension, but it breaks in much tinier pieces. Typically tempered would be on our caps of our impact IGs or non impact glass on glass would be tempered on tempered.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: We are sharing our expertise around all topics relating to the window indoor industry. Whether you are a customer selling our products or a homeowner doing research, the Clear Impact podcast provides helpful content that makes an impact. Subscribe today wherever you listen to podcasts.
Yeah. And for doors and anything near walkways or anything in like bathrooms where there's potential of, you know, falling out of the shower and crashing into the window or whatever. Yeah. We've had lots of conversations around safety, glazing.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:09:41] Speaker A: And all of that. So yeah, I'm feeling finally understanding a lot of these things.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: So every time you change the thickness, every time you have a different low E, every time you have a different color, you have to change the recipe.
[00:09:52] Speaker B: Yes. We're changing recipes on average every third load going through the tempering furnace.
[00:09:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: So that's how many different configurations and glass types we have. So we could change recipes 70 to 200 times a day.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Oh my gosh.
[00:10:08] Speaker B: So if someone had to actually type in all those parameters for each recipe, they would spend 15, 20 minutes typing in those parameters. That's why everything's preset.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: And as easy and simplified as possible. And then you remove a lot of risk for discrepancies and quality issues when you have a set list of parameters.
[00:10:26] Speaker A: And so how hot is this tempering oven?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: It is 680 degrees C, which is about 1250 degrees Fahrenheit.
[00:10:35] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: That's how hot the oven is. The glass is about 40 to 50 degrees cooler than the oven.
[00:10:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: But the glass Temperature is about 620.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: C. And it's moving and that's why it doesn't just melt down.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Right. It's oscillating at anywhere between 90 to 200 rpm.
[00:10:53] Speaker A: Okay. So as long as it keeps moving, it stays in a semi solid form.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yes. Whenever it stops and allows it to sag, that's where you pick up distortion and bow. So our furnaces that we have around the company are Glaston tempering furnaces. And they're two zone shake and bake, which is not a continuous fed furnace. It actually does oscillate. So it goes, glass comes into the first zone, stops, and then goes back to the beginning of the first zone. And it just oscillates back and forth until it reaches its desired. Typically 40 seconds per millimeter at max temperature is the scientific way of setting up a recipe. So it could oscillate in there. If the cycle time is 100 seconds, it'll oscillate in each oven for 50 seconds each.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: And so one oven is to get it hot and the other oven is to cool it down.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Both ovens are actually one's doing 80% of the heating portion of it to get the glass heated to the center. And then the second oven is actually just kind of finishing it off. And then once it's hit that desired goal to be heat treated, the next stage is a cooling section which comes out. When the glass comes out red hot, it goes through a cooling process which is known as quenching. Quenching is what is manipulating the skins of the glass to cause the compression and tension and increase the strength. The best way to describe it is like a blacksmith or a sword maker.
[00:12:20] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:21] Speaker B: How they've got, you know, red hot poker and the hot coals, they bring it out, they form the sword with a hammer and then they turn around and then put the red hot steel into a bucket of water. That process of that water is known as quenching. The quicker you can cool that surface, the harder you can make that material. We can't quench glass with water, obviously, because it would explode. So we have to do it with air.
[00:12:46] Speaker A: Right.
[00:12:47] Speaker B: So we have on top of our tempering furnace here in Venice, we've got four blower motors for each stage of the quenching process. One blower motor is equivalent to a 747 jet engine.
[00:13:01] Speaker A: Oh, wow.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: So that's a serious amount of air coming through there. Some of them get up to as high as 60 inches on the water column. So that's a lot of air. The thinner the glass, the higher the air. The thicker the glass, the lower the air. Because obviously you hit it with too much air, it'll explode.
[00:13:17] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:13:18] Speaker B: And all those quench settings and cooling settings are all part of the parameters of the recipes from start to finish.
[00:13:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: It's from the load table to oven one, oven two, the cooling sections, and then also all of our parameters for distortion specs, for Bose specs. All that's part of the recipe.
[00:13:37] Speaker A: Yeah. This is so interesting. I never thought about the low E thing in regards to tempering. Wouldn't it be easier just to put low E on afterwards?
[00:13:44] Speaker B: From an easier standpoint, yes. But for a cost avoidance type, you would have a lot of wasted silver to coat it afterwards.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: So inside of a coater, a sputter coater, which is a vacuum sealed chamber, when you are electrifying the silver to create those electrons and neutrons floating in the air that sputter down on the glass, you want to have the entire load bed of a coater full of glass.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Right.
[00:14:11] Speaker B: So it catches all of that very valuable silver. You do not want that to fall inside of a coater. And plus, when you switch from different coating types, from double silver to triple silver, they have to change out the different material and then they got to clean out the inside of the oven. So if you have all made to order, cut to size, already heat treated, and then you try to coat it later, it's not cost effective because that silver costs a lot more than the glass.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Okay, that makes sense. I get it now because I was just like, wait, yeah, why wouldn't you just do it afterwards? Okay.
[00:14:42] Speaker B: Yeah, no, yeah, it's not that easy. From a yield standpoint, you want to have as large a sheet of glass as you can in a coater.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Right, no, that makes sense. And so can we talk a little bit about the equipment? I mean, we kind of talked a little bit about it, but like, I love talking about numbers and how much things cost and, you know, this machine costs, you know, hey, we've got, you know, 32 Joseph machines over at Assembly Plant 1, and, and they're like a half a million dollars each and we're getting more. And this roboglazer is like, I don't know, just under half a million. Like, it really wows people when they start to hear about some of the price tags on this stuff, But I love to just like, shed some light on, like, just how massive all of this equipment is and what goes into it and where it comes from and all of that. So whatever you can share around that would be great.
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I happen to know a lot about our equipment. I used to be the engineer that one of my projects was to install a couple of the tempering furnaces here in Venice.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: And then so also specing out and purchasing new furnaces for different locations was part of my job for the capital projects as well. So our furnace that we have in Venice is a two zone shake and bake batch furnace. The first furnace is known as an RC350, which is a radiant convection. And then our second furnace is a fc, which is force convection. Really, it's two different designs that were kind of put together to serve the same purpose, but relatively, they're almost the same. There's different types of pneumatic versus chain driven versus belts, different types of mechanical parts, but they're pretty much the same setup on the inside. This particular furnace, you know, purchased today, could cost you anywhere between 1.7 million to 2.5, depending on all the bells and whistles you want with it, with distortion parameters and all the different options for really dialing in and getting the glass as perfect as you can possibly get.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: Wow. And where does it come from?
[00:16:43] Speaker B: These furnaces are made in Finland. Glaston is the OEM manufacturer and they're made in Finland.
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:16:50] Speaker B: I believe they might assemble them in the United States nowadays, but they're made in Finland.
[00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah. So do you get to go to Finland and see the new stuff?
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Not lately, since I'm not in engineering, But I have been over there when we did fat and machine runoffs and qualifications for our furnaces.
[00:17:06] Speaker A: That's cool.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:17:08] Speaker A: So I guess this is the big question, right? Like, everything that we do is because it's going to serve our customers better on some level. And so how does keeping all of this in house, rather than just saying, hey, Cardinal or Vitro or whoever like, you guys, just process all of our glass for us and we'll just take it as you send it to us. What's the benefit of having these big fancy tempering ovens and all the equipment and all of the necessary components to produce and process our own glass? What's the end result for our customer?
[00:17:42] Speaker B: Well, I mean, at the end of the day, most of the suppliers that we use have the same equipment we do because we want to buy the best of the best. And we want to make the best of the best. So we all pretty much use the Glaston tempering furnaces. Some have two zone furnaces, you know, and Cardinal has all the way up to 10 zone furnaces. Depends on the need. And if you're running made to order or made to stock. Changing recipes every three loads. Or some tempering furnaces set a recipe for a month and run millions of square feet.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:18:16] Speaker B: And then change it every so often. That's not the type of furnace that we have, but it's pretty much all the same. OEM manufacturers for the most part. But the biggest bang for the buck for why we want to have our own tempering furnaces so we can control all the parameters. A lot of furnaces set up outside of our company, they're set up based off of ASTM standards.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Which is a nice range. But, you know, from the ability to control it ourselves, we can tighten those specs and get them to exactly what we need. And we can control the distortion, we can control the bow, we can control the input and the output. So I would say the biggest benefit of having the equipment in house is our ability to control those levers well.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: And to have it just next door to, you know, our major assembly plant where, hey, we need to redo this piece of glass or whatever reason, we can push it through a little faster.
[00:19:12] Speaker B: Yes. Our turnaround time is much quicker when. When we have the tools and capabilities in house.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I have one other question, and this is completely unscripted. So some of our folks have been to our showroom and have seen some of the tables that we have in there that are like basically shattered glass that are also laminated. And you're behind that, right?
[00:19:37] Speaker B: Yes. I've been making those tables since I was a sophomore in high school.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: 1993 to be exact.
[00:19:44] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: But yes, I used to take the reject units back when I lived in Iowa, and we would take rejected units off the scrap rack and then take them home and I would sell them to buddies for like $10 to make ping pong tables.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: We'd put them on sawhorses, but then we got creative and started breaking the middle light and getting a little fancier. We would put logos on the inside.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: So that goes back 25, 30 years.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:09] Speaker B: And then once we started looking at making tables here, I came up with the idea, you know, hey, I've done this in the past. Let's try some blue glass. Let's try some arctic snow interlayer. Let's get pretty creative. And that's where that came from.
[00:20:22] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I think you could probably start a little side hustle if you wanted, because many people have said, where can I get this?
[00:20:28] Speaker B: Yes, they are very interesting.
[00:20:30] Speaker A: I said, well, Ronnie's going to charge you $10,000 every time he has to do one.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: So, yes, I'm taking POS now.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: So, Ronnie, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Thank you, and I appreciate all of your knowledge. We're actually going to turn this PO into a course, so we're going to test people to see if they're really listening and paying attention.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: Sounds great. Thank you for the opportunity. And thank you.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks, Ronnie. Have a great day.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: You as well.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: The Clear Impact podcast is brought to you by PGTI University. We are a part of Mitre Brands, a family of leading window and door brands united by our passion for quality and relentless pursuit of 100%. One of the missions of Mitre Brands is to unite and deliver the finest customer experience possible across the nation. Our window, window indoor brands deliver regionalized expertise and products. Backed by a national company, PGTI University is here to educate you, our listener, so that you can be a more informed consumer of window indoor products.
