For centuries, people have used glass to fill ‘light holes’ in the exterior walls of buildings. Today, glass is an essential component in many buildings; It is a material that allows you to push the boundaries of architectural design even further by pushing the boundaries of our imagination to help create unique, visually stunning, high-performance designs.
Glass creates a transparent architecture that can make you feel closer to the outside world. You can choose coated glass for the exterior of a building with the reflective properties you want. You can even choose a color with very to little reflective properties that complements the building’s surroundings. Basically, the shape and color of the glass can be adjusted in many ways.
Curved Glass
Designing using glass doesn’t mean you have to design with straight lines. If you prefer soft curved corners and edges, curved glass can help you turn your ideas into reality.
For building cladding, glass can be dished (which can also be coated) using a thermal gravity process. Here, the glass plate slowly descends into a bending die of a certain shape. This means that many options are possible, from concave and convex to cylindrical and biaxial. In cases where safety is important, lamination can be applied to the glass after the bending process.
Alternatively, the glass can be shaped using heat treatment through hardening or heat strengthening. In order to increase the ultimate strength of the glass, the glass is cooled rapidly after the desired camber is achieved.
Printing on Glass
Aesthetics and performance options can be expanded by applying a coating to flat glass, whether it’s a specific color desired, a natural appearance in color, or a highly transparent glass design regardless of whether it’s reflective or not. Other techniques can be used to create your ideal design, such as etched, patterned and painted-back glass. Here we will consider some of the techniques used to print on glass.
Inks and ceramic paints (enamels) can be printed on glass. Enamels are printed on flat glass and baked. During the curing process of glass, the enamels melt and are permanently fused to the glass surface to form a colored ceramic layer. Printing techniques on glass include:
Cylindrical Coating
Here, ceramic enamel is applied precisely and evenly to areas such as arch fillings and edge enameling.
Film Printing
This includes the preparation of a web that creates the “open” (to be printed) and “closed” (non-printed) sections. The enamel is then pressed into the open parts of the mesh using a spatula. The “open” sections form the motifs or patterns to be printed.
Digital Printing
This technique gives you more design flexibility. By using a digital glass printer that is specially designed to apply ceramic ink in the form of patterns or images onto the glass surface.
Colored interlayers on laminated glass
A wide palette of different colored foils can also be combined to achieve the colors you can imagine in a laminated glass. Guardian Glass works with manufacturers around the world with this variety of talent.