Method of manufacturing glass gobs molded glass articles, and optical elements

Abstract

Methods and a device of manufacturing glass gobs with good productivity without defects in appearance from a glass melt. Glass gobs are manufactured from glass melt gobs by molding and cooling glass melt gobs in glass gob molding parts that are intermittently rotated. In one method, single intermittent rotation period of said glass gob molding part is in a range of 0.1 to 0.25 second, and the single intermittent rotation distance of said glass gob molding part is 0.8-7 cm. The device for molding glass gobs from a continuously flowing glass melt has a turntable intermittently rotated around a rotation axis and glass gob molding molds positioned on said turntable. The glass gob molding mold has multiple glass gob molding parts that receive glass melt on the upper surface thereof and mold the glass melt into glass gobs. The glass gob molding mold is positioned on a turntable so that said glass gob molding parts are disposed at equal intervals around a circumference centered on the rotation axis of the turntable.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.