Electric Furnaces

FIC has, almost certainly, a far more extensive corporate knowledge of electric furnaces than any other company in this field. It can offer clients all the advantages of these furnaces, ideal for more volatile glasses, with none of the traditional disadvantages.

As well as the company’s origins lying in electro-heat and specifically electric furnaces, a sizeable proportion of the FIC workforce has gained considerable expertise and experience working for glassmakers with all-electric furnaces prior to joining the company. Added to this is FIC’s much-lauded and internationally recognized reputation for technological innovation.

One of the known disadvantages of electric furnaces is a poor turn-down ratio. FIC’s highly advanced solution to this is its unique Fully Modulating Electric Furnace embodying a flexibility of operation that allows zero to maximum design pull without detriment to glass quality.

FIC has provided medium to large scale furnaces to a number of clients worldwide. Equally its range, which includes laboratory-scale furnaces and those of all shapes and depths, affords capacities from a few kilograms to 200 tonnes per day.

All benefit from FIC’s carefully selected design details based on unmatched experience and appreciation of glass convection current flow in the furnace and unlimited support by our team of experts and consultants.

Uniquely, FIC can ensure complete stability of composition in the high-tech formation of PDP and LCD glass. In these glasses the company offers well proven electrode solutions rather than expensive and unproven precious metal.

The FIC Maxi ‘Q’ No-Weld Electrode Holder is ideal for the more aggressive glasses. It is particularly forgiving and resilient with no critical weld inside of the refractory blocks.

With the advantage of low capital cost and 24 hours rebuild and warm-up periods, Pochet furnaces are ideal for those subject to the vagaries of a volatile market where stop/start may be an operational feature.

FIC’s innovative technology allows Pochet furnaces to be used for the melting of Basalt.

Other specialist applications include rolled sheet and coloured glass.

FIC: all the advantages of Electric Furnaces without the disadvantages

Only the World’s No. 1 technological innovator, with the most experienced staff in this field, can bring you all the advantages of electric furnaces with none of the disadvantages.

Electric Furnaces have long been acknowledged as ideal for the more difficult glasses such as the various forms of Borosilicate glass, including Neutral Borosilicate used in the pharmaceutical industry, Pyrex with its low expansion, Fibre glasses, Opal Borosilicates for ovenware and Opal Soda for tableware as well as the PDP and LCD glasses.

Offering an extensive range of electric furnaces of varying depths, shapes and capacities, which range from 200 tonnes to a few kilograms a day, FIC has drawn on its extensive experience and reputation for always challenging the accepted barriers of technology to provide a number of different types of furnaces to clients worldwide.

Laboratory scale furnaces

FIC can provide Laboratory scale furnaces from those for lead crystal, opal and glass melts to enable companies to carry out evaluations of different glasses. It also provides a range of furnaces for glass craftsmen. Electric furnaces have the advantage of being less noisy and more thermally efficient and thus environmentally friendly.

Of necessity, inherent in the process are the large amounts of time when the process is stopped. FIC is the only company to factor in this very significant element of electric furnace operation.

Once again FIC’s innovation overcomes the restrictions of traditional dogmatism in the provision of electrodes for PDP and LCD glasses. Typically the industry uses platinum electrodes. Whilst occasionally these have their use, FIC’s experience and pioneering philosophy have enabled it to supply systems with more conventional electrodes, using molybdenum for the Borosilicate and Opal glasses and tin oxide electrodes for lead crystal glass.

Ideal for the more ‘difficult’, ‘aggressive’ glasses is FIC’s unique Maxi ‘Q’ No-Weld Electrode Holder. It is the only holder which has been field-proven as being capable of insertion through the batch-blanket, through the partially melted batch and into the glass for effective sealing of the electrode thereby eliminating the typical problems of electrode breakage that are common with electrodes from the top. It has no weld inside of the furnace refractory blocks with the result that there can be no leakage of water into the furnace itself in the case of inevitable wear to the furnace refractories.