Last week on June 16 – June 18, Glaston successfully organized the first-ever Glaston Innovation Days, a virtual customer event on the latest innovations and trends in architectural, automotive and display glass processing.
Several hundreds of Glaston current and potential customers from all over the world registered for the total of six sessions in which Glaston’s product and industry experts shared their insights on the latest developments in glass processing technologies.
Hosted from a production hall at Glaston’s premises in Neuhausen-Hamberg, Germany, two live stream sessions were run daily: one on the latest developments in architectural glass and the other focusing on the latest news from Glaston’s automotive and display glass technologies.
Digitalization and automation
In the architectural glass session, the digitalization of the flat tempering process was demonstrated with the latest innovations such as online fragmentation prediction for every glass and the white haze detection using Artificial Intelligence (AI). In addition, integrated lines and a tempering process autopilot were introduced. The autopilot reduces the operator’s influence and offers process control without parameters. A higher degree of automation is also on the agenda for the laminating process and with the autopilot, the furnace will learn to achieve the most optimal way of running instead of operators having to do adjustments manually. The trend in flat lamination is a growing use of structural interlayers and for that Glaston introduced the new convection control technology, offering a significantly wider operating window even with complex laminates.
For the insulating glass manufacturing process, the new arrissing machine MULTI’ARRISSER was introduced via live demonstration from the factory floor. Combining edge arrissing, arrissing of the flat edge and corner dubbing into one single machine, the MULTI’ARRISSER represents the proven cup wheel technology for homogeneous and uniform arrissing quality even at the beginning and the end with a 5 to 10 times higher lifetime for glass edge arrissing than any other arrissing systems. With a maximum speed of 60 m/min. the MULTI’ARRISSER is the fastest single-head machine worldwide.
In addition, the new CORNER’REFINER for sealed insulating glass units was demonstrated, an automatic corner treatment with spatula system and corner roll for finishing to reveal unloading operator from this work.
For swift customer support, Glaston Virtual Engineer service was presented with a Glaston specialist advises and support customer’s workforce virtually on-site using mixed reality (MR) headset. The solution gives cost savings of 10% - 40% per intervention as e.g. no travels are required.
Highlights of automotive & display glass session
In the automotive industry, thin glass applications are a continuing trend. For thin glass pre-processing Glaston’s thin glass kit that can be installed as an upgrade kit on new and existing cells, was presented.
With significantly improved performance parameters, the new HYPERFEX grinding wheels represents a revolution in edge grinding, with a holistic view of the overall process in pre-processing of glasses for different application areas. Furthermore, the new automotive machine generation CHAMP Evo with two optimization features was introduced to the audience with the first being a linear drive instead of the spindle on the grinding machine for higher precision and more dynamic movements, and the other one a honeycomb table on grinding machine for higher precision and more dynamic movements.
Showcasing developments in Heat Treatment automotive glass processing showed how Glaston’s active convection technology improves the process with coated, printed and complex glass types and enables faster heating. The advantages of the new Matrix Evo bending furnace, available with different size and capacity configurations to reduce cycle times, was introduced, as well as the new HTBS bending and tempering system with the most dense control matrix in the market to meet the highest quality standards with bent tempered glass.
Included in the subscription-based services, the digital upgrade packages for operator and production support, the Glaston Insight Automotive PLUS as well as various Apps were presented.
