RegaLead Puts Sandblasting on the Map for Cambridge Residents

Comprising 180 new homes for KeepMoat in association with Cambridge City Council and manufactured by Britdoors, lucky residents in a selection of properties have had their own local area maps designed into their doors’ decorative glass units.

Paul Edwards, RegaLead’s Door Industry Market Manager commented: “This is a perfect example of how our sandblasting solutions can offer true differentiation and appeal hugely to the whole spectrum of individual tastes. As this project shows, whatever the design, whether for one door or 1000 doors, using our Cadblast technology, customers can take a vision and make it into reality. 

For this project, the 93 high performance decorative units were sandblasted on toughened laminated glass with a map of the local areas including Latimer, Water Lane, Aylesbrough, Colville, Campkin and Atkins. The very talented designers and two of the UK’s leading glass artists Louise Watson and Zoe Chamberlain , drew a different detailed map for each of the areas which was then accurately replicated through the sandblasting process. The result is stunning.

Louise Watson comments: “The balcony and door glass feature hand traced maps of each neighbourhood. The balcony panels are made from 11.5mm toughened laminated glass with a sandblasted and hydrofluoric acid tone finish design. The double glazed units in the front doors feature a segment of the neighbourhood map sandblasted onto the internal 6.4mm toughened panel with the 4mm toughened external panel sandblasted all over with the exception of a motif, unique to each site, giving a layered effect at night time when the lights are on in the property.

“As a key part of the project, we worked with groups of young people from the neighbourhoods around the new developments to generate starting points for the designs.  Exploring symbols and abstract motifs to represent the meaning of Home, students looked at signs and symbols from different cultures for inspiration. Using an etching press, the students experimented with creating their own abstract motifs, layering and overlapping to create resources for us to turn into the final designs for the door glass and balcony panels”.

Paul concludes: “From simple house names and numbers, to detailed 3D graphics like these maps, sandblasting with RegaLead offers genuine differentiation to suit every taste. We love getting involved in projects like these which span creative and commercial. It’s the very reason we acquired Decorative Door Products in 2011 to allow us to do short to medium sized product runs of truly innovative bespoke door glass.”