Exhibitors Focus on Innovation and Integration During GlassBuild America 

Soft Solution North America displayed its cullet scanner for the first time this year at GlassBuild America.

When it comes to what’s new in glass, glazing and fenestration products and components, GlassBuild America has a lot to offer. The show is taking place this week at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, where hundreds of exhibitors are featuring some of their newest developments. Offering customers solutions to improve and assess the quality of their products has been a big focus for many of the exhibitors this year.

LiteSentry was busy talking to attendees about its inspection equipment, including the new Temper QC, which integrates its other systems, as well as any modern furnace or ERP system into a unified tempering quality control system. The company also featured its new Owl 3, a recipe selection plus fault detection system for tempered glass. According to Jakub Kowalczyk, sales and marketing manager, the Owl is located on the front end of the furnace and reads the information about the glass, such as thickness, low-E coating, etc. and then selects the recipe for the tempering process before sending through the furnace. It can also detect a faulty load in the glass, among other features.

Viprotron is continuing to focus on its anisotropy scanning and measurement equipment. According to Rainer Feuster, sales director, while there are many people here at the show who are still new to understanding anisotropy, fabricators and processors are becoming increasingly aware of the issue. He explained that as the market continues to grow and the demand for glass continues to increase, the need for this type of inspection equipment will continue to increase.

Nate Huffman, president of Soft Solution North America, was excited to be featuring his company’s cullet scanner for the first time here at this show. He said there was a lot of interest in it because it eliminates having to manually select and count the ten largest pieces of cullet. Historically he explained, the process, which temperers do to show they are within safety regulations for tempered glass, has been done by hand. With the new scanner, the glass is analyzed and counted automatically.

On the software side, Ron Crowl, president and CEO of Fenetech, said one of the key issues they continue to address with customers relates to labor, and helping them produce what they need to with the labor that they have.

“Companies are adding so much to the machines, and they are becoming more automated. So our effort [with the software] is to integrate all of that,” said Crowl, adding that their focus on integration isn’t just in the plant, but also in the office/business functions. “We are continuing to add functionality and features to the software,” he added.

The GlassBuild America show runs through September 19. Stay tuned to usglassmag.com for more news and videos from the show in Atlanta. You can also visit with USGlass magazine at the show in booth 2812.