HEGLA TaiFin CTF- Series Furnaces Ready for the UK Glass Market

Steve Goble, Managing Director, HEGLA UK discusses the advantages of the new HEGLA TaiFin range of furnaces, now available on the UK market.“In Autumn 2019 the Hegla Group increased its product range with a 51% buy-in to the now rebranded Hegla TaiFin range of furnaces.TaiFin is based in Nokia, Finland and was established some 10 years ago with hands-on design and installation personnel, who are vastly experienced in the toughening process to supply machines to the Automotive Toughened Glass Industry via the GBF-Series of Advanced Windscreen Bending Furnaces. This proved to be very successful under the guidance of its Finnish Directors and as a natural progression led to the development of the CTF-Series of Architectural Flat Glass Furnaces with Forced top and bottom convection.The construction of the CTF - Series is modular and as well as the standard range of machines under 6m x 3.3m; installations have also taken place of 6, 9, 12 and 18m length machines in 3.3 m width. An additional useful option is that installations can be expanded at a later date by simply adding extra modules.The UK market has always been a very high user of toughened glass products, certainly over 50% of architectural flat glass domestic and commercial in the UK is Toughened and this continues to grow. The introduction of coated glass meant that furnaces had to become more sophisticated in their application and control of heat hence - convection. All the glass products now being produced to increase performance within sealed unit applications are designed to work against the toughening process, currently up to triple silver coated products. Who knows what the future coatings will be?Certainly, the furnace you buy now is not just for today it is for many years to come as well as the products to come; surely then it must produce the highest visual quality possible?Overall or general bow must be excellentLocal Bow (roller wave) must be absolute minimumEdge curvature must be as near to zero as possibleYour furnace application has to be flexible enough to achieve all these goals not just now but on future products? Glass Anisotrophy measuring systems fitted to Hegla Taifin CTF – Series Furnaces have proven the highest quality on all these measurement criteria.Why would you want the Hegla TaiFin CT-Series Furnace?Patented Convection System and Convection Position ControlPatented Heater exchange under hot conditionsDesigned to provide excellent quality of all glass types and coatingsMachine design up to 3600mm width with no limit in length because flexible modular designGlass Thicknesses 2.85mm – 25mmCustomised projectsI am sure you are sitting there reading this article and asking how is he suddenly an expert on furnaces? They may make good cutting tables, but I am not going to buy a furnace just because it has HEGLA in the name!You are right! - I am not an expert, but I am learning and very fast!Let me tell you what I have learned so far. Earlier this year we had training in Finland and of course, we were told that the TaiFin range of products were the best thing since sliced bread. From what I was told and what I saw at an installation in Finland the mode of operation, build quality and finished product quality were exactly what the TaiFin guys had said they would be, but how could I compare against what is on the market, what do I know?Luckily a good HEGLA customer visited the same installation with me the following week with Jarno Nieminen of TaiFin. Jarno gave the same sales indoctrination as the week before (many people in the industry will find this hard to believe I mostly listened, … to learn! Yes, I am capable of doing this on occasion!); the difference was that these guys were from production and maintenance within an insulating glass toughening environment. They have a couple of furnaces so it was possible to draw comparisons on the CTF Series with their hands on experience of toughening machinery . Truthfully there were positive responses and confirmation of what I had hoped would be reality after the training from the previous week. This gave us a direct comparison to other products/applications from people withproduction experience!It became apparent from our discussions/comments that the overall view was that the CTF Series machines have been designed by experienced, hands-on engineers to be taken apart as easy as possible, with many advantageous design features to help regarding maintenance and production, with many patented features incorporated to achieve high quality toughened glass.The finished product quality was there to be seen on the run-out section of the furnace, which was equipped an Anisotrophy scanner, very high-quality toughened glass.The Hegla TaiFin CTF-Series is here to stay and it will be well worth learning more about the range. We are quietly confident, it will prove to be exactly what we have said and would welcome the opportunity to visit and discuss your future needs.”For more information on the HEGLA Group’s automated system solutions or furnaces please call: 0330 1245759