Breakthrough for auto glass profiling with water jet technology

In the design and construction of cars, buses, coaches and lorrieas, the need to integrate large sheets of glass requiring intricate, often complex cut-out areas, has presented manufacturers with problems both technical and expensive in time and money. Traditionally, automotive safety glass is cut to size by first using automated profiling machines with diamond wheels to slit or score the surface for subsequent snapping off by skilled workers. Straight-line work is easy, but contours and geometric shapes call for greater skills. It has also long been possible to make holes in glass of reasonable diameters. What has not been so practical, until now, has been the ability to produce internal cut-outs of any desired size or complexity. The breakthrough has come about with the advent of water jet cutting equipment. Polish automotive glass supplier Saint-Gobain Sekurit HanGlas Polska Sp. z o.o. has solved the problem with the installation of a high-accuracy Water Jet Sweden cutting machine at its Zary Plant which enables the firm to cut-out any size or shape of area easily and economically. In a direct comparison with a situation where the production of windows with internal ‘holes’ was previously possible, the water jet cutting method enabled productivity to be increased by more than 300 per cent, from 3 to 10 per hour. Using the water jet system, both cut-outs and holes can be performed in a single setting without the need to transfer to a drilling machine. The installed machine has a capacity of 3 by 2 m and the tinted glass sheets involved are typically up to 2,200 by 1,900 mm.