Laminated glass, endless possibilities

Last 20th of October of 2012, Tecnalia  invited me to give a lecture for the Technical Conference: Perforated Sheet Metal for Enclosures and Architectural Meshes.

The lecture was based upon the use of metallic meshes within the laminated glass. I showed the point of view of Cricursa, who have developed lamination technologies followed by the requirements for laminating innovative designs in curved glass.

The facade industry is steadily making progress by demands of Architects and Designers.

Glass is still the one and only transparent filling for curtain walls and interiors designs because it offers versatility, through compatibility with a range of materials and the added value of being bent. Therefore, glass is offering adaptability to meet complex geometries.

The main technologies available for laminating either curved or flat glass are described as follows:

• Screen printing: the colour is baked during the tempering process, bonding it permanently to the glass.

Screen-printed laminated annealed curved glass

• Colour interlayers: the combination of different colour layers of 0.38 mm PVB thick creates a wide range of more than 600 colors.

Color laminated glass

Color laminated glass

• Solar control interlayer: high-technology solar control film is placed  between two layers of PVB, obtaining a high visible light transmission, in the meantime being controlled infrared solar energy.

• Ink-jet printig on interlayers enables the production of designs and photografic images in a laminated safety glass.

Ink-jet printing on PVB

• Metallic meshes have been for the last decade in fashion in architecture, being considered by Dominique Perrault, who has enhanced the use of stainless steel in his most distingued projects.

Metallic mesh laminated glass

• Plastic meshes has been threatening the place of the metallics, because of easiness to get laminated versus metallics and it requires less energy cost to manufacture. It is also manufactured from metal diposits that use the latest technological advances and provides solar control control and privacy functions, as well as unrivalled asthetic value.

Plastic mesh laminated glass 1 way vision 

Plastic mesh laminated glass 1 way vision 

The purpose of the industry is to achieve the quality required in those products, this means to develop adequate lamination strategies to suit different materials all put together.

This post is under construction because future innovative designs will demand further investigation to create new products to meet architectural requirements.