To really evaluate the insulating performance of your IG, you must be able to accurately and reliably measure it.
To avoid expensive rework, you need to detect gas filling errors as they happen, not tens, hundreds and certainly not thousands of units later.
To protect yourself from liability, it is extremely valuable to have quality documentation of your production filling process.
Likewise, if you want to promote your accurate and reliable thermal performance as a competitive advantage, you want to be able to verify your claims.
Low on gas
Yet even in these days of enhanced Energy Star scrutiny, too many windows and doors ship with IG containing less than the promised thermal performance. The existing technology to assist you in managing gas fill content has not made this job easy.
And here’s the kicker: Many fabricators still do not realize that there is an easy, in-line and inexpensive way to achieve this: our ThermalCHECK technology.
Previous verification technology meant waiting way too long to be accurate
Prior to ThermalCHECK, it was common knowledge that you should wait at least six hours before checking gas content. Any test done before then was unreliable.
Why? The gas needs six hours to homogenize to make any measurement meaningful. The science behind the six hour lag from filling to testing is valid.
But the cost and consequences of that delay are too high: It’s as bad as having a speedometer in your car that tells you how fast you were driving 400 miles ago! You, like your IG, could be two states away by then.
There has to be a better way
As we mentioned, there is: ThermalCHECK.
To develop ThermalCHECK, rather than focus on what can’t happen, we honed in on how make it easier for fabricators to successfully and efficiently measure gas fills.
The first thing we agreed on is not forcing you to wait six hours or place nearly a full shift of production—or more—at risk.
But given that a six-hour delay is valid basic physics, how do can we accurately measure your fill rate? It’s actually simple:
- Remove the gas
- Mix it thoroughly
- Measure it
- Put 100 percent of it back in the IG unit
Depending on the unit size, this takes about 20 seconds.
Five other requirements you’ll love
- First, testing shall not stop or even slow down the production process
- Second, don’t require any extra labor
- Third, record the results in a computer data base
- Fourth, print a label to show your customers you’re producing and verifying the promised fill ratio and quality
- Fifth, make it an affordable tabletop solution
ThermalCHECK technology does all that. And it’s been in field use at more than two dozen companies for more than three years.
No more estimating, no more guessing
ThermalCHECK doesn’t estimate. It verifies actual gas content at the source immediately after filling.
If something is going wrong, you know right away, not later or tomorrow or Monday or next week or next month. Now.
If anyone questions your process control or fill rates, you have well documented answers. Because ThermalCHECK saves every test it performs for years to come. So you can show that each unit or batch was properly filled as promised.
You can even print a label with the gas content to affix to the window, if you so choose.
For Energy Star, for you
Accurate and verified thermal performance has always been important. But it matters more in the Energy Star era.
It certainly matters for your company. Not just to protect yourself from liability, but to confidently promote your quality and back it up with data.
Now you can raise your quality, lower your rework exposure and cost, protect your company from liability and give your sales force and dealers a selling advantage. You can do all that with ThermalCHECK.
ThermalCHECK is available as a standalone tabletop unit and is standard in our OptiGas and FastGas gas filling solutions.
Want more details?
Contact Ryan McHugh at ryan@optigas.com or his mobile phone at 440.221.8455. He can help you determine if ThermalCHECK technology or any of the 17 solutions we’ve invented or selected to improve glass cutting and IG fabrication can assist your operations.
Our mission is to solve IG gas filling and verification and glass handling challenges. Every one of our systems addresses a specific challenge encountered during our four decades of fabricating insulating glass. And from working with and listening to glass fabricators like you.
If it’s not right for you, we’ll tell you
If the best solution for you comes from elsewhere or just involves some changes in your process using what you have, we’re going to tell you.
Next: Affordable and portable tempered glass quality control.