Trends in automotive glass processing

With newer and more exciting trends shaping the automotive industry every year, the automotive business is always in the fast lane.

It might seem that the whole world came to a stop recently and nothing much has happened. But the automotive industry’s engines never stopped running, and light vehicles and buses are racing back. In addition, today’s unique challenges have generated several new trends in automotive glazing. 

First of all, the technology integrated into the glass unit continues to increase. In windshields, for example, you now have cameras, rain detectors and other sensors –all of which need to be hidden. This results in the ever-increasing size of screen-printed areas. In sunroofs, the screen-printed area can constitute up to 50%.

Last but not least is a more frequent need to use coated glass. Typically, this refers to the sunroof business, but we are seeing it in the windshield segment as well. Although this is not the most widespread trend, we believe glass processors need to be prepared for this one to gain momentum in the future.

Are you equipped to meet the trends?

State-of-the-art technology can help automotive glass processors keep up with the trends.

Is your glass processing equipment capable of meeting the highest quality standards? Is it able to process the most complex glass required by the market today?

As automotive glass gets thinner, it creates special bottlenecks when preprocessing the glass. To avoid those, the process requires greater cell setting care.

This includes additional stabilization during the handling, cutting and break-out, as well as grinding processes, applying lower cutting and breaking pressures and using smaller cutting wheels. A slower handling device speed, especially during acceleration and lifting, is another factor to consider during preprocessing. And lastly, stable support and smooth surfaces are needed on all glass touching points to avoid breakage.

With heat treatment, if the furnace control matrix allows focusing heat on even the smallest zones, it will be possible to run glass with wide screen-printed areas or any other elements that make glass processing more challenging.

Why convection?

With conventional heating technology, such as radiation, there is always a temperature difference between clear and screen-printed or digitally printed areas. This is because printing absorbs more radiation than clear glass.

Additionally, convection enables faster glass heating. With a faster preheating cycle, we have a longer window for glass shaping, leading to better shaping capability and overall process repeatability.