Once upon a time I worked as a programmer for a business systems development company and I was assigned to work on the Owen Cornings account.
Owens Corning, as most people would know, is basically into making products made of glass, specifically fiberglass. In fact, the company owns the trademark “fiberglas,” without the “s.”
The main element in fiberglass is silica. Silica, in turn is usually present in sand. Glass is made by subjecting sand to intense heat. Silica melts a specific temperature so when the silica melts, it is separated from the other compounds consisting the sand.
Owens Corning uses arc furnaces to heat the sand. Arc furnaces operate on the theory that electricity takes the path of resistance between two points. So when you pass sufficient electricity through one electrode, it would jump to a nearby electrode. When electricity jumps from one electrode to another, heat is created. That heat is what is used to melt the silica in sand.
From glass to fiberglass, molten glass must be spun into wool through a spinning process. This is the same process or principle in making cotton candy. However, glass is more brittle than sugar crystals so chemicals have to be added to make glass wool pliable.
Fiberglass has excellent insulation properties so it is used in a wide range of applications from insulating houses and appliances to making roofing shingles.
The making of roofing shingles can be an interesting process to watch. First, fiberglass wool is made into fabric-like material called mats. They’re like cloth spooled onto large spools. Fiberglass mats are then infused with asphalt (or tar). In the olden days, paper was infused with tar and then used as roofing material. Thus they were called tar paper.
After the fiberglass mats are coated with tar, small granules of pebbles are sprinkled on the surface. Zinc granules may also be sprinkled to give the shingles the ability to resist moss and fungal growth.
I just find it ironic that with the amount of technology Owens Cornings had in turning sand into fiberglass, during the great floods of 1993 (when the levees along the Mississippi river were breached) they had to put sandbags around the Kansas City plant to prevent the floodwaters from entering.
And how did they make the sandbags? By manually shoveling sand into bags, one shovel at a time. You’d think that if anyone would have invented a sandbag filling machine by then, it would have been Owens Corning.
Is it really so hard to invent a sandbag filling machine? Since no one has invented one yet, it would seem so.
I have been to several rice mills and if I were to take what I learned from Owens Corning, I was expecting that at the end of the milling process, I would find someone with a shovel shoveling rice into sacks. But no. In all the cement plants, you’d probably expect to find people shoveling cement into bags before someone sews the end. Apparently, it’s all automated.
Thirteen years since the Mississippi River floods, people are still filling sandbags one shovel at a time. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
Owens Corning, as most people would know, is basically into making products made of glass, specifically fiberglass. In fact, the company owns the trademark “fiberglas,” without the “s.”
The main element in fiberglass is silica. Silica, in turn is usually present in sand. Glass is made by subjecting sand to intense heat. Silica melts a specific temperature so when the silica melts, it is separated from the other compounds consisting the sand.
Owens Corning uses arc furnaces to heat the sand. Arc furnaces operate on the theory that electricity takes the path of resistance between two points. So when you pass sufficient electricity through one electrode, it would jump to a nearby electrode. When electricity jumps from one electrode to another, heat is created. That heat is what is used to melt the silica in sand.
From glass to fiberglass, molten glass must be spun into wool through a spinning process. This is the same process or principle in making cotton candy. However, glass is more brittle than sugar crystals so chemicals have to be added to make glass wool pliable.
Fiberglass has excellent insulation properties so it is used in a wide range of applications from insulating houses and appliances to making roofing shingles.
The making of roofing shingles can be an interesting process to watch. First, fiberglass wool is made into fabric-like material called mats. They’re like cloth spooled onto large spools. Fiberglass mats are then infused with asphalt (or tar). In the olden days, paper was infused with tar and then used as roofing material. Thus they were called tar paper.
After the fiberglass mats are coated with tar, small granules of pebbles are sprinkled on the surface. Zinc granules may also be sprinkled to give the shingles the ability to resist moss and fungal growth.
I just find it ironic that with the amount of technology Owens Cornings had in turning sand into fiberglass, during the great floods of 1993 (when the levees along the Mississippi river were breached) they had to put sandbags around the Kansas City plant to prevent the floodwaters from entering.
And how did they make the sandbags? By manually shoveling sand into bags, one shovel at a time. You’d think that if anyone would have invented a sandbag filling machine by then, it would have been Owens Corning.
Is it really so hard to invent a sandbag filling machine? Since no one has invented one yet, it would seem so.
I have been to several rice mills and if I were to take what I learned from Owens Corning, I was expecting that at the end of the milling process, I would find someone with a shovel shoveling rice into sacks. But no. In all the cement plants, you’d probably expect to find people shoveling cement into bags before someone sews the end. Apparently, it’s all automated.
Thirteen years since the Mississippi River floods, people are still filling sandbags one shovel at a time. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
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