Customers often ask our staff to explain the differences between the types of safety glass. There are two types of safety glass on the market.
Tempered Glass.
Which is heat treated or strengthen, by heating and then rapid cooling. This changes the molecular structure of annealed glass (non safety) to tempered glass. Tempered glass is 4 times stronger than annealed glass and it breaks into tiny pieces that are relatively harmless.
Laminated Glass
Is two or more pieces of annealed (or in some cases tempered) glass that are fused together with heat and pressure using an inter-layer. The inter-layer between the panes can be made of PVB or a specialized product, such as DuPont’s Sentry Interlayer. Multiple pieces can be laminated together in order to produce bullet or blast resistance glass.
Cardinal Glass has an excellent YouTube video embedded below that discuss how laminated glass is made. In addition to making laminated glass, Cardinal makes most of the insulated glass products for the windows that Old Town Glass sells. These include Milgard, Marvin, and Andersen.
http://youtu.be/taupDsYcnms
Old Town Glass, Inc. is based in Novato, Ca and is a residential and commercial glazing contractor.
