Kopp Glass, Inc. Announces Their Successful Installation of Two New Annealing Lehrs

Nov. 8, 2010 - PRLog -- Pittsburgh, PA, Sept. 14, 2010.  Kopp Glass announced successful installation of two annealing lehrs manufactured by E.W. Bowman, Inc.  

The installation of the new lehrs is part of a major capital improvement program that started over a year ago at Kopp Glass.  

“The new Bowman Lehrs have already exceeded our expectations. The quality of the glassware has been outstanding”.
-   Rob Diana, Director of Operations

The lehrs will enable Kopp to provide more consistent annealing thus enabling better lens performance in their intended applications.  By using state of the art lehrs, Kopp has the added flexibility of annealing intricate and difficult shapes that previously would not have been possible.  

In addition to providing a better environment for annealing, the lehrs will also be used for coloring and decorating processes.  The lehrs will provide better color consistency with red and yellow colored lenses.  This will afford Kopp the ability to achieve tighter transmission and chromaticity requirements.  The lehrs will also be used to bake “cure” decorating enamel used to opaque certain portions of the lens surfaces.    

“The convective heating methodology utilized by the new lehr equipment provides improved temperature uniformity over an increased furnace volume, thus producing more consistent colors and an improved anneal on our thick, intricate glass designs”.
   - William Chen, Director of Research and Engineering

Kopp decided to purchase lehrs from E.W. Bowman because they, like Kopp, are industry leaders.  Since 1959 Bowman has been designing and manufacturing annealing lehrs for the glass industry.  Their custom designed and manufactured lehrs are used all over the world.  

Each lehr was manufactured in the U.S. and was designed to be as energy efficient as possible.    Natural gas is used to fire the lehrs and electric is used to power the eight circulating fans installed within each lehr.  A convection approach is taken in order to take advantage of the air that is already heated.  The design of the lehr allows for temperature control within a 10 degree F range (previously 100 degrees F).  This allows for better control of gas flow and usage during the lehr operation.  

Kopp Glass, Inc. (http://www.koppglass.com) located in Pittsburgh, PA has been in business since 1926 and is the industry leader in the manufacture of clear and colored precision molded and blown technical glass for industrial, and commercial applications.  Kopp’s markets include airport lighting, aircraft lighting, medical device illumination, military (night vision & covert), railroad & traffic signal lighting, light filters of all types including infrared filters, architectural lighting theatrical lighting, technical and other industrial technical glass applications.

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Kopp Glass is the world wide leader in the manufacture of molded/pressed, blown, precision, and filter glass for technical, industrial, and commercial applications.