Cerion Laser – innovative glass processing.

The demands from the design of buildings, rooms and furniture increases from year to year.  With subsurface engraving and laser surface processing, Cerion offers something new to the market responding exactly to this development.Accordingly, the interest with architects and designers grows.

However, subsurface engraving cannot be used for thermally pre-stressed glass. With the introduction of a new laser process for surface processing, Cerion is now able to also offer a laser process suitable for single-layer safety glass (ESG).

Generally, the current blasting and etching techniques on the market for glass surfaces demand large quantities of material use and personnel. At the same time, these techniques have reached their limits.

As a rule it is impossible to achieve very high levels of resolution (dpi value) or different shades of grey. It is necessary to work with dangerous chemicals and there are waste products produced such as plastic foils, used acids and blasting media. The personnel at blasting and etching systems need to be protected against harmful dust, vapours and noise. Due to the many manual intermediate steps, automation is not feasible for this process. The laser process, by contrast, is very clean and neither requires expensive inks nor a firing process. Glass remains glass. Glasses engraved with laser are meanwhile used successfully also in outside applications since there are no restrictions regarding durability.

Laser finishing of glass as digitally controlled process allows the direct transfer of the structures and patterns desired directly from the PC onto or into the material. Transferring photos and details is, thanks to the fineness of the laser beam, no problem and offers a whole new quality to glass design. With the c-vertica processing centre Cerion also enables fully automated manufacturing without personnel allowing the machines, for example, to also produce over night.

The innovative surface process developed by Cerion is meanwhile used not only for matting glass but also to strip and structure bathroom mirrors and lacquered glass such as Lacobel® (float glass with polymer colour coating) or Lacobel-T® (ESG glass with mineral colour coating).

According to statements from our customers, the costs for the production process of bathroom mirrors could be lowered by more than 70% compared to conventional sandblasting; from now on photo-quality motifs are possible with the laser process.