Architectural glass percent of the world's flat glass is produced by the float glass process invented in the 1950s by Sir Alastair Pilkington of Pilkington Glass, in which molten glass is poured onto one end of a molten tin bath. The glass floats on the tin, and levels out as it spreads along the bath, giving a smooth face to both sides. The glass cools and slowly solidifies as it travels over the molten tin and leaves the tin bath in a continuous ribbon. The glass is then annealed by cooling in an oven called a lehr. The finished product has near-perfect
Hot metal gas forming be used in HMGF. In this case the die can be used not only as a shaping tool, but also as a tempering tool, so that the final hardness of the formed tube after forming and cooling is increased. The process is often called "press hardening" in this case. Hot metal gas forming Hot metal gas forming (HMGF) is a method of die forming in which a metal tube is heated to a pliable state, near to but below its melting point, then pressurized internally by a gas in order to form the tube outward into the shape defined by