Investigations on glass-to-mold sticking in the hot forming process

The sticking behavior of various mold materials and coatings for hot glass melt forming processes, like, e.g. glass container manufacturing, was investigated using a new testing procedure. The mold material specimens under test were subjected to frequent contact with hot viscous glass gobs in a pressing process with presetting well defined non-isothermal pressing parameters to simulate industrial working conditions. Three different glass compositions were used in this investigation, soda-lime silicate glass, lead crystal glass, and borosilicate glass. The sticking characteristics of the tested mold materials and coatings were described by two quantities, a ‘lower’ and an ‘upper’ sticking temperature, which are specific for each mold material and type of glass in the non-isothermal pressing process. The ‘lower’ sticking temperatures of uncoated mold materials were found to depend monotonically on the thermal effusivity (heat penetration coefficient) of the bulk mold materials. All of the coating materials applied to various substrate mold materials were found to reduce the ‘lower’ sticking temperature as compared to the uncoated materials. Most of the coating materials were found to reduce also the ‘upper’ sticking temperature.