CompanyNews

Guardian and Intermolecular Partner to Develop Advanced Glass Coatings
Guardian Industries Corp. of Auburn Hills, Mich., and Intermolecular Inc. in San Jose, Calif., have signed a multi-year collaborative development program (CDP) and technology licensing agreement

The partnership will address the development and commercialization of a diverse set of advanced glass coatings, many related to energy generation or energy-efficiency in buildings. Target applications include both sputtered coatings to be developed with Intermolecular’s Tempus™ P-30 combinatorial physical vapor deposition platform, and liquid coatings to be developed with Intermolecular’s Tempus F-10 and F-20 wet workflows. Improving the performance and reducing the costs of glass coatings will be a key focus of the development partnership.

“Through our work with Intermolecular, we hope to take materials innovation in glassmaking to an entirely new level,” says Scott Thomsen, Guardian’s chief technology officer and group vice president for glass in North America. “Intermolecular’s HPC approach to R&D allows us to comprehensively and efficiently explore the periodic table of elements, and to quickly develop and commercialize high-performance coatings for a variety of high-growth applications. Glass coatings still have enormous potential for innovation.”

As Russ Ebeid of Guardian once said, “We’ve coated glass with copper, silver and gold. We have still got almost all the elements on the periodic table to go … and each of those elements will bring different characteristics to the glass” (see March 2006 USGlass, page 4). 

Intermolecular’s HPC hardware and software resources allow technologists to conduct hundreds of experiments in parallel, and then quickly sift the resulting data for promising combinations. These possibilities can then be evaluated, refined and tested for manufacturing readiness, all in a fraction of the time that would be required with traditional R&D techniques. Intermolecular’s team of scientists and engineers works closely with their counterparts at customer companies, to ensure that the development work is tightly linked to new-product needs.
www.guardian.com

Venture Tape Expands Partnership Industrial Sales Corp.
Venture Tape Corp. in Rockland, Mass., a subsidiary of 3M, announced it is expanding its agreement with Industrial Sales Corp. (ISC) for sales and distribution of its adhesive products for the fenestration and glass building products market. ISC will now handle sales of Venture Tape’s products in the Southeast and Western regions of the United States, and will continue to handle product sales in the Northeast and Midwest regions under the original contract.

According to Theo Janssen, national sales manager of fenestration and building products for Venture Tape, the new agreement builds on the relationship between the two companies, which began in 2007.
www.venturetape.com

Santelli Tempered Glass Continues to Grow with Third Location
Santelli Tempered Glass in Monessen, Pa., has opened its third site in Elkhart, Ind.

Joseph Santelli, the company’s chief executive officer, says he selected Elkhart, Ind., due to its location. “It’s perfectly located between Toledo and Chicago, both with large residential window manufacturers,” says Santelli. “The area [Elkhart] has gone through a major downturn with the rise in energy costs and the fall of the economy. That provided an abundance
of facilities that would work for my operation.”

Santelli says his company’s growth goes back to automation and speed. He explains that the concept he employs was developed by Lance Porter, owner of All Weather Architectural.

“Before he came up with the idea of taking orders today, tempering all night and delivering tempered glass tomorrow, deliveries sometimes took two weeks to get to the window manufacturers. His philosophy of not touching soft-coated or any glass until it was tempered allowed us to give a finished product that was of better quality than the market place had seen, and within 24 hours from placing the order was much quicker than anyone was delivering,” Santelli says.

He continues, “We now know that the production process Lance developed results in the lowest labor cost per square foot of glass tempered. When you can produce tempered glass at a lower price with a better quality and deliver the glass overnight, customers want your product.” Santelli explains that it’s the automation that makes the process unique. “The glass is cut, laser logo’d, seamed and batched for the tempering furnace without being touched by anyone. The ability to supply tempered with this process has made it possible to expand so rapidly. I am using that process in all three locations.”
www.santellitemperedglass.com

Keymark’s New Circle Size Extrusion Press is Live
Keymark Corp.’s new 14-inch circle size press is now fully operational. The company says the press will enable architects and engineers to design larger, more detailed extrusions with a width and precision not previously available in the marketplace.

Keymark says the press will add 32 million pounds of demonstrated capacity to its 88 million pound company-wide capacity, while adding 55 new jobs in the Lakeland, Fla., plant. This brings its total number of presses to seven, with circle sizes ranging from 6 to 14 inches, and covering more than 500,000 square feet of production space.

“For 46 years Keymark Corp. has prided itself on its commitment to the marketplace, and our investment in the new press again shows our leadership position and willingness to be a flexible, competitive partner to our clientele,” says William L. Keller III, chief executive officer and owner. “The appeal of our new press capabilities, along with our ability to guarantee all aspects of a project, from alloy quality to finish and delivery, make us the only aluminum extruder that is vertically integrated in-house.”
www.keymarkcorp.com

kudos
Crystal Windows Celebrates 20th Anniversary
Crystal Window & Door Systems in Flushing, N.Y., marked the completion of 20 years in operation on May 15, 2010. The company was started two decades ago by Taiwanese-American immigrant Thomas Chen with a small Queens, N.Y., operation fabricating aluminum windows for the local community. Crystal today has production facilities in New York, Chicago and Missouri and has expanded beyond windows to establish operations in building products including solar panels and aluminum extrusion and finishing.


USG
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