What Causes Orange Peel?

[Shamrock Marbles]

Mon,

Sorry for making you repeat yourself and I understand........pretty cool video and not what I expected! I don't have a surface gage but wonder how much surface deviation in some of the euro's or jolly's?

No problem. I hope you didn't take me wrong.

I was citing my passages to help others in reference to your question.

I doubt anyone will read this thread in its entirety.

Funny you mention measuring the surface.

Want to go halvsies?

http://www.schmitteurope.com/Surface-Roughness-Measurement/lasercheck-automated.html

I'm sure glad you not investigating who stoled two bars of turkish taffy from the Kipton general store in 1967.........ok, it was me! lol

If you need more...

http://www.groovycandies.com/vanilla-bonomo-turkish-taffy-24-bars?zmam=61863401&zmas=1&zmac=1&zmap=59033&gclid=CL-psYXJpckCFQgKaQodnIkAxw

Mon, thanks for your patience.

Sincerely,

John McCormick

"Shamrock Marbles"

[Shamrock Marbles]

Galen:

Sorry but I doubt very much Vacor allows any of their rollers to get rusty and pitted, JMHO

Daddy always told me, "A man's entitled to his opinion, even no matter how wrong it is."

Maybe you and I should go together and see?

Hopefully, one of us will learn something.

Welcome back.

and not so sure any of the largest types are made with chips.

I now firmly believe you don't really read anything.

Post #69 shows a yellow 1-5/8" diameter marble.

That surface is embedded with glass frit.

I toured a glass factory in W.V. many years ago. They took their still hot hand blown pieces and plunged them into water . It was really neat. The results were neat too.

And how does this move the discussion forward?

I've seen Ro Purser cool a murrine gather in a bucket of water.

I can say his results were pretty neat, but it has no correlation to the Vacor squiggles.

Sincerely,

John McCormick

"Shamrock Marbles"

[Shamrock Marbles]

Galen:

Here are some better close up photos of a hot gob of glass ran on rough (sand blasted) rollers.

Some round impressions, some elongated impressions, no scratches in the valleys.

Sincerely,

John McCormick

"Shamrock Marbles"

[FISHSLAYERMARRBLEGRIFF]

Take a gob of glass and drop it onto a steel marver.

Let it sit until it cools enough to handle and place in an annealer.

When you pull out the cooled mass, the top will be domed, the edges rounded, but the bottom will have concentric rings/waves/chill marks.

The transfer of heat on the bottom is greater to the cool marver (conduction) than the top in contact with the surrounding air (convection).

Heat loss through radiation is negligible.

Ok,now lets take the same glob of glass,put it on a steel marver,that is in constant movement,with multiple,random contact points.Lets not forget that the marvers(augers) do not carry an even temp.,from one end to the other.Whats the results?

Take a gob of glass on the end of a punty.

Flatten four sides on the marver and the end opposite the punty.

You will notice again a waviness form on the surface.

The corners will cool quickest (smallest cross-sectional distance).

Followed by the edges and then the center.

Notice the pattern that forms on the panel surfaces?

Concentric circles or ovals.

A great visual of how glass distorts,by an uneven loss of heat.

But what makes a marble very special is that it is what it is -- a sphere.

The distance from the center to any surface is equal. (All radii are equal.)

The distance from any point on the surface back to itself is equal. (All circumferences are equal.)

It is the only shape that gives the greatest volume with the smallest surface area. (Perfection.)

Yep,this is true,no doudt,as long as it is perfectly round.Lets not forget,all circles a spheres have 2 sides.--in and out.

Because of this physical trait, the marble can withstand quite a bit of cooling before failure.

Not something you can get away with on a glass goblet where the cross section of the glass changes drastically from the lip, through the body, the stem and then to the foot.

Think how long the first marble sits in a bottom of a collection bucket before that bucket is placed in the lehr for annealing?

Marbles are pretty darn durable.

So, as a marble cools on the surface as it is being "spun", it contracts uniformly.

The surface tension of the glass surface increases and places the molten core under pressure.

There is a point where the surface cools and the hot interior no longer has enough energy to reheat the surface.

It is this point when one can safely place in an annealer. (Learned the hard way.)

This would be true,in zero gavity,and the sphere is PERFECTLY round.

A marble does not start out round.It is formed,into a sphere.The shape is close enough for the "balance" to be there.Only thing is,the surface tension is being influenced/disrupted by the migrating,intersecting, contact points,on the augers.

You guys have fun in Mexico!

[lstmmrbls]

Neat clear marbles. Again they look nothing at all like the wrinkles on the Vacors.

[Shamrock Marbles]

Griff:

Obviously, there is no perfect sphere rolling off anyone's marble machine.

Glass is forgiving.

Now, let's concede that I'm all wet and you're right.

Your Post #7 states:

Hot glass and cold rollers.

Marble surface temp cooling too fast on the rollers..

Less orange peel on smaller euro's because of the smaller

volume of glass is more forgiving than the 1 inchers.

Too large of a glass "blank" on the rollers makes footballs and eggs.

Just a guess,,,,,,,,

Mike brings a point that my rollers really never do heat up, like a real continuous marble production run.

I easily concede that, because I show that in my demonstrations by touching the surface even while the marble is rounding.

The marble machine is a big heatsink.

So, my machine rollers at room temperature (as low as 55 degree F) would represent the worst case scenario for "cold rollers" (as you so state).

True?

I have placed hot glass gobs that where heated from furnaces, glory holes and torches.

Let's say that 2,200 degrees F would be a number to start.

You stated in Post #24

past experiance,,2,000 degrees +/- 100--in the tank

We can safely assume that glass won't gain heat after it leaves the tank, so let's use your number of 2,100 as "hot glass" (as you so state).

Can you share with us, why I don't get orange peel on my marbles when I put "hot glass" on "cold rollers"?

Shouldn't I be wrinkling the crap out my marbles?

Sincerely,

John McCormick

"Shamrock Marbles"

[Hoody]

[...] A marble does not start out round.It is formed,into a sphere.The shape is close enough for the "balance" to be there. [...]

Reading this thread with great interest I would like to highlight one point (maybe I got it wrong):

Trying to get a sphere out of the glob of glass is not quite easy. All the marbles that are around, ancient, vintage and modern, have just been produced as a toy at their time. The better the spehere shape the better the product but for a cheap toy there are some trade-offs and also the not so perfect ones are sold to get revenue.

Go, buy a bag of just delivered marbles at the TRU or wherever and check them. None of those is a perfect sphere. And even if so, air enclosure causes imbalance - at the opaque ones this is not visible from outside. So there naturally will be much cause for non-perfect coolling down and a mismatch from the sphere shape. The imbalance, either shape or mass center, you literally can hear at high rolling speeds (approx. 6ft/s and higher for the 5/8") on a metal trackway.

An orange peel for my understanding either is an effect that pushes out a very large area of the material only leaving small punctures or the other way round an effect that causes this small craters to get depressed into the material while the most surface area keeps its level. It only can be explained by a voluminous flow of material. The latter idea needs less volume to move and thus less energy to cause this mass movement. I prefer it for this argument - it is typical for physical effects to occur with least possible energy consumption.

Some people claim that the cooling process is uniform causing an uniform temperature distribution across the perfect sphere. I just would like to argue that in a pot of boiling water there is movement of water before the steam bubbles get visible. This movement is not uniform. There are certain zones where columns of water exist that bring water down and in the neighbourhood there are columns that bring water up. Those flows just develop on their own, caused simply by the heat, and coexist. There is no mechanical separation necessary. Probably such a behaviour takes place inside the glob of molten glass rolled out to a sphere? Is the molten glass of so low viscosity or do I have to consider it to be of slurry consistence?

[Steph]

....

An orange peel for my understanding either is an effect that pushes out a very large area of the material only leaving small punctures or the other way round an effect that causes this small craters to get depressed into the material while the most surface area keeps its level. It only can be explained by a voluminous flow of material. The latter idea needs less volume to move and thus less energy to cause this mass movement. I prefer it for this argument - it is typical for physical effects to occur with least possible energy consumption.

....

One underlying question is why some marbles seem more prone to orange peel than others. Vacor is well known for orange peel for instance.

[mon]

Roller surface maintenance/condition.

[lstmmrbls]

Moisture escaping from the water lines cooling the rollers

[lstmmrbls]

John, could you heat your rollers up to about 1000 degrees and see if it has any effect on the marbles. Maybe rough rollers are not denting the marbles maybe the hot metal has a pulling kneading effect on the glass????? Just another silly assumption by a orange peeled brain. Those 1.5 inch globs gotta be transferring some major heat

[wvrons]

The Alox machine pictured earlier is the only Alox machine that has survived to date. It sat in the woods uncovered for around 15-20 years maybe longer ? Nancy Frier purchased the machine and brought it to Jabo in Reno OH. Her father and grandfather owned and ran Alox. It was impossible to try and run it in the condition which it arrived. So most all of it was disassemebled cleaned derusted and reassemeled. Nancy wanted to have the machine make marbles one more time before her father passed,which he did later. She invited families with marble ties connected to Alox or the machine to be present when the machine made marbles. Those were Frank and Ruby Sellers(L.E. Alley) Chuck Cox his sister Rae Weekley and husband(Ravenswood),Nancy Frier(Alox). Plus Dave McCullogh Richard&Ronnie machine operators and myself. The rolls were rusted and pitted very bad. They also had holes patched years ago with copper and brass. The rolls were removed and i hauled them in my truck to get cleaned or blasted. They were blasted with plastic beads and walnut hulls. The machine was put back together and it made marbles on two dates. The first attempt resulted in round as expected marbles. The surface of the marbles had heavy or deep orange peel which was no surprise. There were at times some marbles that had much less or almost no orange peel. But the largest majority had heavy orange peel. This run was done with mostly one type or kind of base glass which was from Fenton Glass cullet. A second run was done and it was much more worse than the first attempt. Very few round marbles were made and the orange peel was even worse. Most all the marbles were football egg shaped double ingots or just dropped between the rollers. Every adjustment possible was made and nothing made good steady marbles. Some of the reasons were that i had tried my luck at cleaning or polishing the rolls more after the first run. I am sure that i probably affected the rolls tracking. But there was nothing to loose. I had the rolls smooth and looking like chrome. A second reason for problems on the second run was the base glass. I do not know what it was. But a fact is that it was extremely hard and required much more heat to melt. Andy Davis made some tops from these second attempt marbles. Andy told me face to face "that was the hardest glass i have every tried to remelt" . The two runs at Jabo on the original Alox machine are not good comparisions to most marble production.

I am no expert with glass or making marbles. But i think it might be possible that more than one lone item can cause orange peel on a glass marble. There are so many many different variables when making large numbers of machine made marbles that many times it is difficut to pin a problem down to one specific thing or spot.

Maybe the glass itself can help cause orange peel ?

Maybe the glass temp can cause orange peel ?

Maybe the rolls condition can cause orange peel ?

Maybe the rolls temp can cause orange peel ?

Maybe the cooling can affect orange peel ?

Maybe it is difficult to know which single item or combination caused the orange peel on any certian machine made marble ? If the marble companies knew exactly what caused it on what marble and it was cost effective they would have not allowed it. Most times it is not possible to keep every machine running 365 days a year or cost effective to store the machine in a manner to prevent any mositure from reaching the rolls.

The group of machines pictured earlier were at Jabo.

The Peltier pee wee machine pictured above was at Jabo. The Peltier pee wee machine never made a single round decent marble while at Jabo. It was tried several times over a few months with many adjustments and changes. The rolls are wore out completely. The rolls just would not round or hold a marble to the end of the even very short rolls.

I think that as long as big production numbers thousands and millions of machine made marbles were or are being produced. There will always be orange peel on some marbles.

It was good to see again the Jabo Alox run marbles and Alox machine posted by Galen and John.

I hauled the Alox machine from OH back to St.Louis where it was or is in a museum there today.