Breaking the limits of automotive glass quality

Even more importantly, traffic safety depends on a clear view.  Therefore, car glass manufacturers highly depend on a flawless quality of their products in order to satisfy customer requirements and to maximize their saleable production. ISRA VISION provides the solution with its innovative and complete product portfolio. It offers opportunities to examine the product quality from float glass to the final windshield as well as featuring many other automotive glass applications.

Automobile manufacturers have to fulfill highest quality and safety standards and therefore impose stringent demands on the glass industry. Products with optical distortions, imperfections or damages are not accepted and consequently lead to a loss in production. In case of products delivered with undetected defects, even the company’s reputation might be jeopardized. This situation can be easily avoided: The world’s most complete product line offered by ISRA assures highest quality standards along the entire value chain of the automotive glass production. Its patented optical inspection technology represents the only all-encompassing solution for the automotive glass industry worldwide.

FORMSCAN: High-precision inspection system for non-contact and laser-free in-line 3D shape measurements of bent glass

Starting with the inspection of non-bent glass after cutting and grinding, the quality control in this stage of the production process is reliably performed by PowerPlate (P2)-Inspect and PowerPlate (P2)-Edge, identifying defects such as scratches, breakage or edge imperfections. Low-quality intermediate products can be removed and further processing will be avoided early on, leading to considerable savings. In addition, the inspection data provides valuable information to evaluate and optimize the production process.

A particularly challenging production step is the subsequent printing on glass. Especially silk-screen printing used for more complex tasks such as placing of defrosting wires in rear windows is highly demanding. PRINTSCAN enables the automatic, contact-free 100% in-line inspection of silk-screen and decorative color printing applied to automotive glass.

Objective, quantifiable evaluation of aesthetic properties of automotive glass, now even performable in-line:

SCREENSCAN-REFLECTED DISTORTION

After the bending process, the shape of the curved glass is checked by the patented, non-contact, in-line measuring system FORMSCAN, using more than one million 3D points on the windshield. It reliably checks the entire shape within all typical cycle times and quality is 100% documented. Scrap will be channeled out before the lamination.

SCREENSCAN-FINAL: fully automated and 100% end-of-line inspection for distorting, straying and absorbing defects with one system

SCREENSCAN-FAULTFINDER, certified by nearly all automotive companies, represents the standard to control optical distortion on the production line. The proprietary Online-Moiré technology ensures real, reliable and repeatable measurements with highest resolution and accuracy in accordance to all official standards, such as ECE, DIN and ANSI. Installation is easy as special requirements and quality specifications from different carmakers can be covered by customized filters. The end-of-line inspection of automotive glass is performed by SCREENSCAN-FINAL which has been developed to examine the borders, corners and edges of the windshield, as well as the silk print. Furthermore, the fade-out band and the entire glass area are checked for any damages or defects. This ensures that drivers will not be distracted by optical warps or scattered light caused by scratches. With its stray light, absorption and distortion modules, the fully automated, patented, in-line inspection system ensures a high, reliable and fully documented quality. In addition to the functional safety of a vehicle, the outer appearance plays an ever more important role as a decisive emotional sales factor. With SCREENSCAN-REFLECTED DISTORTION, it is possible for the first time to perform an objective inline evaluation of the curvature quality of glass based on the reflection. Subjective assessment processes are history now. But a safety relevant feature is even included here: the recognition of slightest unevenness allows to optimize the bending process which results in a better function of windscreen wipers. Due to the close customer cooperation and the extensive industry know-how ISRA consistently provides innovations based on patented processes. They enable glass manufacturers to optimize the quality of their products, increase production efficiency and maximize revenue. The flexible and customizable inspection systems also play a decisive role in the ability of glass manufacturers to not only guarantee that they can supply the highest quality products, but also to provide verification to back this claim – an important factor when it comes to safety relevant product.

SCREENSCAN-FAULTFINDER with Online-Moiré technology for reliable high-resolution and reproducible transmitted distortion measurement due to industrial standards

With a 100% monitored value added chain and opportunities for immediate process improvements, producers are ideally prepared for future challenges of the market without having to worry about complexities.