Flat glass, sheet glass, or plate glass is a type of glass

Glass

Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

, initially produced in plane form, commonly used for window

Window

A window is a transparent or translucent opening in a wall or door that allows the passage of light and, if not closed or sealed, air and sound. Windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent material like float glass. Windows are held in place by frames, which...

s, glass doors, transparent walls, and windshield

Windshield

The windshield or windscreen of an aircraft, car, bus, motorbike or tram is the front window. Modern windshields are generally made of laminated safety glass, a type of treated glass, which consists of two curved sheets of glass with a plastic layer laminated between them for safety, and are glued...

s. For modern architectural and automotive applications, the flat glass is sometimes bent after production of the plane sheet. Flat glass stands in contrast to container glass

Container glass

Container glass is a type of glass for the production of glass containers, such as bottles, jars, drinkware, and bowls. Container glass stands in contrast to flat glass and fiberglass...

(used for bottles, jars, cups) and fiberglass

Fiberglass

Glass fiber is a material consisting of numerous extremely fine fibers of glass.Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass fibers, but mass manufacture of glass fiber was only made possible with the invention of finer machine tooling...

(used for thermal insulation and optical communication

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

). Most flat glass is soda-lime glass

Soda-lime glass

Soda-lime glass, also called soda-lime-silica glass, is the most prevalent type of glass, used for windowpanes, and glass containers for beverages, food, and some commodity items...

, produced by the float glass process

Float glass

Float glass is a sheet of glass made by floating molten glass on a bed of molten metal, typically tin, although lead and various low melting point alloys were used in the past. This method gives the sheet uniform thickness and very flat surfaces. Modern windows are made from float glass...

. Other processes for making flat glass include:

• Rolling (Rolled plate glass, Figure rolled glass)
• Overflow downdraw method
  Overflow downdraw method
  The overflow downdraw method or fusion method is a technique for producing flat glass. The key advantage of this technique as compared to the float glass process is the pristine surfaces, not touched by molten tin. The technique is used for the production of flat panel display glass by the...
  
  
• Blown plate method
  Blown plate
  Blown plate is one of many types of hand-blown glass. It is made from broad sheet glass by laboriously hand grinding and polishing both surfaces. Blown plate is of a sufficient quality and size for mirrors and coach glasses....
  
  
• Broad sheet method
  Broad sheet
  Broad sheet is a type of hand-blown glass. It is made by blowing molten glass into an elongated balloon shape with a blowpipe. Then, while the glass is still hot, the ends are cut off and the resulting cylinder is split with shears and flattened on an iron plate. . The quality of broad sheet...
  
  
• Window crown glass technique
  Crown glass (window)
  Crown glass was an early type of window glass. In this process, glass was blown into a "crown" or hollow globe. This was then transferred from the blowpipe to a pontil and then flattened by reheating and spinning out the bowl-shaped piece of glass into a flat disk by centrifugal force, up to 5 or...
  
  
• Cylinder blown sheet method
  Cylinder blown sheet
  Cylinder blown sheet is a type of hand-blown window glass. It is created with a similar process to broad sheet, but larger cylinders are produced by swinging the cylinder in a trench. The glass is then allowed to cool before the cylinder is cut. The glass is then re-heated and flattened...
  
  
• Fourcault process
  Fourcault process
  The Fourcault Process is a method of manufacturing flat glass. First developed in Belgium by Émile Fourcault during the early 1900s, the process was used globally. Fourcault is an example of a "vertical draw" process, in that the glass is drawn against gravity in an upward direction...
  
  
• Machine drawn cylinder sheet method
  Machine drawn cylinder sheet
  Machine drawn cylinder sheet was the first mechanical method for "drawing" window glass. Cylinders of glass 40 feet high are drawn vertically from a circular tank. The glass is then annealed and cut into 7 to 10 foot cylinders. These are cut lengthways, reheated, and flattened.This process...
  
  
• Plate polishing
  Polished plate
  Polished plate is a type of hand-blown glass. It is produced by casting glass onto a table and then subsequently grinding and polishing the glass. This was originally done by hand, and then later by machine...
  
  

See also

• The term plate glass universities is used in the United Kingdom
  United Kingdom
  The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
  
   to describe a group – or generation – of universities (in an acknowledgement of the term red brick universities
  Red Brick universities
  Red brick university is an informal term used to refer to six particular universities founded in the major industrial cities of England. Five of the six red brick institutions gained university status before World War I and were initially established as civic science and/or engineering colleges...
  
  , used for an older generation of establishments).
• Architectural glass
  Architectural glass
  Architectural glass is glass that is used as a building material. It is most typically used as transparent glazing material in the building envelope, including windows in the external walls. Glass is also used for internal partitions and as an architectural feature...