AJJ Glass Blog

The manufacture of tempered safety glass considered is performed by means of a hardening furnace horizontal or vertical. The float glass (common) undergoes a process of heating and rapid cooling which makes it much more resistant to breakage due to impact, showing thus a resistance five times greater than that of common glass. Once hardened, the glass can not be processed, cut, drilled, etc.. Therefore, any transformation process has to be done before the tempering process.

Benefits

Its main feature is resistance. Resistant to thermal shock, bending, buckling, twisting and weight. It is considered a safety glass, as if broken, shatters into small pieces bit sharp, which reduces the risk of injury.

Applications

It is widely used in construction, automotive industry and decoration. It is also the only glass that can be used as door without the use of frames.

Safety glass covers tempered glass which is also called toughened glass, fire-resistant glass, laminated glass and the other combination of laminated glass products according to the general building code, standards or industry rules. Tempered glass can withstand normal impact and even if it is broken, the small chips could not hurt you. But if the small chips fall down from upper air, the damage gets big and big due to accelerated speed. Don’t you think it is still a kind of safety glass? More and more cases have showed us the answers. Only for this reason, single tempered glass is not suitable for high-rise curtain wall.

Nowadays, people seem toughened glass as safety glass and use it into glass curtain walls. While the other types of safety glass, laminated glass always be ignored. Maybe the cost of laminated glass is higher. But I don’t think they don’t eliminate the safety performance of laminated glass. Ordinary glass after tempering, the strength on the surface will rise by 3 to 4 times than before. But the edges and corners are very weak, even if the impact resistance and compressive strength is lower than float glass. When the glass edges or glass corner was broken by cracking, the full panel of tempered glass will be broken either, but the full panel of float glass will be fine. On the other hand, glass covers exiguity crystal, Nis that is not available to avoid in the glass manufacturing. When the temperature gets high, the volume of Nis gets big under the tensile stress range in the tempered glass. When the volume expands over the tensile stress, the tempered glass will blast. That is what we called “spontaneous broken” Although more than 8mm thick tempered glass need to heat soak process upon some standards. Heat soak process systems will maximum reduce the spontaneous cracking, but not available to avoid it happen. In the real world, if the glass falls down from curtain wall, most of glass is tempering glass. So AJJ Glass thought the single tempered glass for curtain wall is not suitable. It is not safety. While laminated glass is different, it is able to eliminate almost all glass chips fall off effectively. Accordingly AJJ Glass suggest that frame supported glass curtain wall should adopt laminated glass instead of toughened glass, point supported glass curtain wall can use fully tempered glass. In order to satisfy energy saving, the laminated insulated glass is the best choice for frame supported glass curtain walls. We hope all concerned department including contractor, designer, builder and quality inspector can take this positive suggestion in consideration and do some change to really solve the issue of glass spontaneous broken and then falling down and hurt humans.

Sometimes we found that some people attribute all glass broken accident into tempered glass spontaneous broken. Maybe they won’t be responsible for anything. In fact, they don’t seriously analyze and find out the reason to avoid the same problem in next time. AJJ Glass do dome research on glass broken issues and found that most of broken issues are not caused by spontaneous broken, but others. Especially for glass that has been installed into the curtain walls for several years, even if for decades. Generally, the main characteristic of spontaneous broken is that there is a similar butterfly lung in the position of Nis expansion. And the more important is that spontaneous glass broken always happens in the first two years, it hardly happens after that. When the glass was broken but still in the wall, the butterfly lung is the best way to recognize if it is spontaneous or not. So it is an important thing to recode this as soon as the glass has broken. Of course, most of time we can’t found the characters of brokering before the glass falls down. In this case, it is must to analyze the reasons. It is made by spontaneous broken? Or it is made by the temperature changes? Or it is made by mechanical crack through outside force? It has to according to the position, direction of broken, the installation period, the structure of points of curtain walls, the material of frame or point supported, the usage conditions, the surround circumstances, the broken time and the broken details and so on.

It is only for reference, hoping it is useful for you. And welcome your positive comments.

By AJJ Glass team, which is a leading tempered glass supplier and architectural glass manufacturer in China for over 15 years.

In this article AJJ Glass Ltd which is a professional tempered glass supplier in China, will examine the qualities of tempered glass and explain its common applicationss for windows and offer some buying tips.

Usually Use

One of the most common uses for tempered glass includes vehicle side and back windows for automobiles. The windshield of automobiles however is what is made from what is known as laminated glass and not tempered glass. They use laminated glass because it is shatterproof because of the lamination process.

The laminate used on the windshields doesn’t allow the glass to fly apart when it is broken, instead it is held together so that when it is broken, it splits and cracks but doesn’t come apart. It remains in one piece pretty much anyway.

Other common uses for tempered glass or toughened glass include industrial strength windows and doors and glass doors without frames. If the door is frameless, it needs the extra strength of the tempered glass just to withstand normal use such as opening shutting and the occasional slamming of the door. Bulletproof glass is also constructed from very thick layers of tempered glass.

Tempered glass is said to be at least four times stronger once it goes through the tempering process. The glass is much more common in use where there is a greater hazard of the breaking of the glass being used. The glass is simply stronger and safer than regular glass.

Buying tips for tempered glass windows

From what we found on the internet, the actual cost of the tempered class by itself isn’t a huge difference for the safety and durability it provides. The question seems to be whether or not there is a need for tempered glass in the home. If you have a particular window that is subject to more stress than usual, then yes, use tempered glass.

If you have lived in a house for 20 years and never had a broken window, then chances are there is not a need for tempered class. Then again if you just want the added security that knowing if the window shatters, people in your home are less likely to get cut in the process or clean up, then you may want tempered glass just for the safety in case something out of the ordinary happens.

Another case where you might want to spend the extra couple dollars on tempered glass is in situation where your windows are subject to severe winds or even hurricanes. While hurricane strength winds may even break tempered glass, it will at least break in a much safer manner than regular non-tempered glass.

Summary

That is about all you need to know about tempered glass when thinking about buying it for your home. It is basically only called for in areas where windows are commonly broken and in situations where your families safety is at risk by the possibility of breaking the window and having the broken glass cut someone.

Tempered glass is almost impossible to get a severe cut from. So tempered glass, especially if the option doesn’t cost much more, may be a great investment when thinking of replacement windows in your home. I don’t think it is necessary to replace all of your regular glass with tempered glass, but if you need replacement windows anyway, why not choose the added security measure for your home and family’s sake? It sounds like a good idea for the right situations.

You may also be interested in a comparison between tempered glass and annealed glass.

Tempered glass is widely used for shower, table top, windows and doors and other architectural applications. As more and more spontaneous breakage cases about toughened glass in our life. Do you now think tempered glass is safety enougth? After many years of experiences on architecural glass industry, now I am very pleausre to share my personal points when purchase tempered glass for your next projects.

First of all, you need to know why tempered glass has the potential risk of spontaneous breakage? Please move to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_glass_breakage for more details.

General speaking, all tempered glass manufacturer in the world can't 100% control the spontaneous breakage if it is a fully tempered glass. But it is available to reduce the risk by heat soaking process.So please select heat soaking tempered glass when you want to purchase tempered glass.
Please note that toughened glass has a few risk of spontaneous breakage even if the heat soaking process. If you want to need a 100% glass spontaneoous breakage free, we suggest you choose heat-strengthened or laminated glass instead unless fully tempered glass have to be required according to your local building code.

Second, we strongly suggest you polished the edges. As the glass edges is so weak. If it is not a polished edges, it is easy to be broken when tempering or striking on the edges.

Third, chose a professional tempered glass supplier, especially a horizontally tempered glass company since horizontally tempered glass processing is a new generation tempering techinical in the market. No bow is avaialbe.

Any help?