Understanding the Glass Standards

This article is written by Paul Bieber of US Glass and Paul.  It is reposted here with his permission.

Glass and perfect don’t go together in the same sentence. There will always be something that the fussiest customer will complain about. Your two options are curling up with a bottle of Southern Comfort or understanding the glass standards that are used within our industry.

The basic standard is ASTM C 1036-06. This means: American Society for Testing and Materials, Standard # C1036, updated in 2006. If you want to download the full standard (for a small fee) go at ASTM.org and you will see the breadth of their offerings. You may be able to get a full copy from your glass wholesaler or key fabricator.

This is the standard for flat glass, that is annealed glass coming from the floaters. Tempered and laminated glass have different standards which we’ll discuss in the future. But this is the parent of all the standards. If something is allowable by this standard, it is allowable in tempered or IG, or Lami, or whatever. I cannot stress how important it is for you to use this standard. Your vendors do. I bet every glass shop in America has called up their fabricator complaining about a small scratch on Mrs. Johnson’s IG unit, and hears that it is within standards. You must understand these standards, and be able to manage your installs and problems using C1036-06 as a guideline.

Let’s look at the standard. Again, this is for annealed glass, coming from the floater, or going to you, or to your customer. there are various sections in the standard, here is section 1.3: “The specification cover the quality requirements of flat, transparent clear, and tinted glass. This glass is intended to be used primarily for architectural glazing products including: coated glass, insulating glass units, laminated glass, mirrors, spandrel glass, or similar uses.” This covers it all. Your products are in this list.

The next point to understand is there are 4 different qualities of glass mentioned, Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4. Each has different standards, with Q1 being the fussiest and Q4 the most lax. Q1 is defined as glass for high-quality mirrors, Q2 for general use mirrors, Q3 for “Production of architectural glass products including coated, heat treated, laminated and other glass products.”, and Q4 as general glazing applications.

The average glass shop should expect their products to meet Q3. Here are some examples of the Q3 standard:

  • Blemishes under 1.2 mm allowed
  • Blemishes 1.2-2.0 mm allowed if 24″ apart
  • Blemishes over 2.0 mm not allowed

So if there is on small blemish in a piece delivered to you, you own it.

Let’s look at one other part of the standard–The Q3 “allowable Shell Chip Size”, which details what size chips are allowed:

  • Chip Depth Less than or equal to 50% of glass thickness
  • Chip Width Less than or equal to glass thickness
  • Chip Length Less than or equal to 2 times the chip width.

So if you sell ‘perfect glass’ and promise beautiful glass, you may not be able to purchase beautiful glass from your fabricator. Sure, you can buy two of every order, and one will be better than the other, but you won’t be in business for more than a week or two. Ask your fabricator what standards they use, and if they do the same or better than C1036. That answer is what you have to sell to.

Tempered and Lami have even looser standards, which we will discuss next week [in the next article].

The original posting of the article may be found here.

SolidWorks World 2011 Connect

SolidWorks World 2011 Connect

Even though SolidWorks World 2011 is quite a number of months away, SolidWorks Corp wishes to keep everyone in-the-know.  SolidWorks World 2011 Connect is on the SolidWorks website.  The new webpage features feeds from Twitter hashtag #SWW11, many SolidWorks blogs, and the SolidWorks World forum.

Even for the casual reader, this aggregation webpage may be a good one-stop location to see whats going in the realm of SolidWorks World 2011.  There is content that will be relatable for most types of SolidWorks users.

  • The Twitter feeds tend to be live and very lively.
  • The blogs are usually in depth with a lot of helpful information.
  • The forums are a good place to interact with the online SolidWorks community for questions and answers.

Hotels on KAYAK for San Antonio, TX SolidWorks World 2011

There’s a funny commercial from Priceline.com where William Shatner plays his own evil twin who tries to talk someone into booking through a website that is offering a sale by declaring, “it’s a sa-ell; nothing beats a sa-ell.”

This is a sly reference to a Star Trek episode where Kirk did indeed have an evil twin.

As far as getting good prices for rooms and flights for SolidWorks World 2011, be sure to shop around.  If bidding on rooms and flights isn’t your thing, then check out KAYAK.  It provides alerts via email when deals that fit your criteria become available from almost any other travel site.

Also, be aware that business travel is more complex in these times of airline baggage fees, carry on bag fees, handling fees, overweight fees, Groundhog Day fees, unleavened bread fees, etc.  Many travel agencies simply will not handle baggage and other particular fees, which leaves the traveller to pay when they arrive at the airport.   Reimbursement for these on-the-spot fees from your company can be a serious pain.  Have you ever tried collecting credit card interest from an employer?  It’s next to impossible.

So, travellers should be cautious and frugal.  Plan ahead for any trips.  It’s hard to believe that SolidWorks World 2011 is so near.  Didn’t we just get done with 2010?

SWUGN Summit – San Jose in success

SWUGN Summit San Jose came to a close with many satisfied attendees.  In the past, San Jose area attendance to SWUGN Summits has been a bit up and down.  For whatever reason, attendance picked back up this year.  I haven’t checked to see the actual numbers yet, but I believe it is one of the best so far for this area.  Another bonus, I’m happy to report that both major VARs from this area contributed by giving some of the presentations!

Our star presenter was Gabi Jack.  Over the past week, she was stating much consternation over twitter about her impending presentation.  It turns out, she did a great job with her Surfacing presentation.  It was not obvious that this was her first live and public presentation ever since finishing college.  She’s a natural pro!

Another seasoned pro is Phil Sluder.  His SolidWorks tips and tricks session is always a crowd pleaser.  In fact, the session description simply said, “Phil’s tips and tricks…enough said.”  His presentation is good for all comers, from beginners and experienced users alike.

Elisa Moss had a heavily attended session that covered how to use derived configurations and display states for drawings.  She was also a very supportive attendee during other sessions.

Another star presenter was Alex R. Ruiz, who just recently released his new book, SolidWorks 2010: No Experience Required.  His session was partially based on the new book, which earned some well deserved attention.  I’ll be reviewing the book on SolidWorks Legion soon.

My own presentation was about advanced SolidWorks customization techniques.  Although labelled “advanced”, I did cover some easy topics as well to give something for all levels of experience.  My presentation went pretty well, except for a couple of times where SolidWorks did not momentarily cooperate.  Part of the challenge of presenting is working through the surprizes when they come up.  I was glad that the audience participated frequently and showed a lot of interest in the topics that were covered.

As usual, I’m going to have to thank Richard Doyle for putting on yet another great summit!

In other related news, Arthur Kwun of KLA Tencor earned his free CSWP test by uttering the words “SolidWorks Legion is awesome, dude!”  He did this during the lunch hour, so I wasn’t quite expecting it.  It took me a minute to realize he said the winning phrase.  Anyway, congrats!!

SolidWorks World 2011: San Antonio, TX

Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center
Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center

SolidWorks World 2011 will be held in San Antonio, TX, from Jan 23 to Jan 26, 2011.  To highlight this new location, I’m going to give a few facts about this historic city.

Facts

  • Named for Portuguese Saint Anthony of Padua.
  • On average, it has three hundred days of sunshine annually and an average temperature of 70 degrees.
  • Average January temperature is 62 degrees.
  • More than 26 million people visit San Antonio each year.

    Tower of the Americas
    Tower of the Americas
  • It is Texas’ second-largest city and the seventh largest U.S. city
  • It is one of the fastest-growing cities in America.
  • There were 2,808.5 persons per square mile in 2000.
  • Almost 60%  residents are of Hispanic or Latin heritage.
  • It is site of the Battle of the Alamo in 1836.
  • San Antonio Zoo is the third largest in the U.S., with over 3,500 animals including 230 endangered species.
  • It is the home of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs
  • Tommy Lee Jones resides in Terrell Hills, TX, a town near San Antonio
  • Robert Cade, inventor of Gatorade, was from San Antonio
  • Monterrey, Mexico is a sister city

Major attractions

  • The San Antonio Botanical Gardens and Conservatory
  • Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum
  • El Mercado (old Mexican marketplace)
  • Aztec On The River (restored historic 1926 movie palace)
  • Enchanted Springs Ranch (authentic old west 19th-century town used for westerns)
  • The San Antonio Zoo
  • SeaWorld San Antonio
  • Six Flags Fiesta Texas
  • Buckhorn Saloon & Museum
  • Casa Navarro State Historical Park
  • San Antonio Missions National Historical Park
  • Japanese Tea Gardens
  • Brackenridge Park
  • Tower of the Americas
SeaWorld San Antonio
SeaWorld San Antonio
The Alamo
The Alamo
San Antonio River Walk
San Antonio River Walk

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

I’m looking forward to having a great time in San Antonio, TX!

SolidWorks World General Session – Monday (part2)

Another theme of today’s General Session where potential improvements to 3D CAD, much of which is cloud computing based.  These include collaboration to allow more than one person to edit the same model at the same time.  Searches to use data from the database instead of making models from scratch.  Bring a “lifelike experience” (soon to be trademarked term, I’m guessing) to SolidWorks and other applications.  Predictive Engineering that can do things like calculate interferences or handle material properties before the user even requests such data.  With all these improvements associated with cloud computing, I am willing to predict that there will eventually be no distinction between SolidWorks and Catia.