Classifying – separating – and assorting solids – Sorting special items – and certain methods and apparatus for... – Condition responsive means controls separating means
Patent
1989-03-06
1992-04-14
Huppert, Michael S.
Classifying, separating, and assorting solids
Sorting special items, and certain methods and apparatus for...
Condition responsive means controls separating means
209643, 250572, 356431, 36447409, 364552, B07C 5342, B07C 536, G01N 2189
Patent
active
051045230
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
TECHNICAL FIELD
This invention relates generally to a glass-plate sorting system for sorting glass plates on a glass-plate manufacturing line.
BACKGROUND ART
The manufacture of glass plates generally involves the cutting and sorting glass plates out of a glass strip pulled up from the furnace while the glass strip travels on the line conveyor. In cutting glass plates out of the glass strip, a single-grade sorting system has heretofore been employed where only those glass plates which are above the aimed-at quality are sorted out, with the balance discarded.
The conventional single-grade sorting/cutting system, however, has a disadvantage of poor yields in manufacturing products having strict quality requirements. Glass plates for automotive windshields, for example, are required to be free of flaws, and of a high quality from the viewpoint of safety. In the manufacturing process of glass plates for automotive windshields, therefore, they are inspected for the presence/absence of flaws, and any glass plates in which flaws are found are discarded.
DISCLOSURE OF INVENTION
Glass-plate products have a wide variety of applications ranging from glass plates for photocopying machines, which require high quality, to glass panes for buildings, which may be of lower quality. Consequently, producing glass plates by sorting high-grade products and low-grade ones simultaneously on the glass-plate manufacturing line would lead to glass-plate manufacture at the yield of the low-grade products.
The quality of glass plates from which automotive windshields are obtained is such that a glass plate need not be free of flaws over the entire surface thereof, but only the see-through area thereof, which is critical for the vision of an automobile driver, must be free of flaws. The remaining peripheral areas immediately around the see-through area may have a certain degree of flaws, and the outermost fringe area of the plate, which are usually discarded, may have any types of flaws. In the manufacturing process of automotive windshields, therefore, glass-plate production yield can be improved by obtaining glass plates by detecting the sizes and locations of flaws in glass plates and judging what sizes of flaws would exist in the assumed see-through area, periphery area and fringe area of a glass plate.
In order to implement the above-mentioned method for obtaining glass plates, a discriminating-type flaw detector is needed, which is capable of detecting at high accuracy the types, sizes, locations of flaws in a glass strip, such as bubbles formed by the air bubbles entrapped inside the glass plate, foreign particles remaining in the glass plate, knots formed by the almost molten foreign matter remaining in the glass plate in a shape having a streaming tail, drips formed by the metallic tin existing in the tin bath deposited on the glass plate surface. The present applicant has already developed a discriminating-type flaw detector meeting such a requirement and filed a patent application under the title of "A Discriminating-Type Flaw Detector For Light-Transmitting Plate Materials" on May 27, 1987 (Japanese Patent Application No. 62-128089). This discriminating-type flaw detector is a flying-spot type flaw detector that scans the entire surface of a glass plate with a light spot, detects transmitted light, transmitted and diffused light, reflected light, and reflected and diffused light by means of a plurality of light receptors, and discriminates the sizes and other parameters of flaws based on a combination of detected results.
This invention is designed to improve yield by producing flaw data information representing the types, sizes and locations of flaws, sending the flaw data information to the control unit of the glass-plate sorting system to determine whether the glass plate can be cut in accordance with the quality requirements of the glass plate, using the discriminating-type flaw detector.
Consequently, this invention is concerned with a glass-plate production system for cutting a glass strip travelling on a line
REFERENCES:
patent: 3205740 (1965-09-01), Groves et al.
patent: 3215269 (1965-11-01), Walters
patent: 3246550 (1966-04-01), Galey et al.
patent: 3274390 (1966-09-01), Umbel
patent: 3966048 (1976-06-01), Nunes et al.
patent: 4211132 (1980-07-01), Nichols, III et al.
patent: 4914309 (1990-04-01), Masaharu et al.
Hidetoshi Kawamura
Isao Kurashina
Masaharu Okafuji
Huppert Michael S.
Macyra Edward M.
Nippon Sheet Glass Co. Ltd.
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