Production Principle of Tempered Glass
Tempered glass, also known as toughened glass, is processed from standard annealed glass with a professional air quenching technique.
Manufacturers first heat the raw annealed glass evenly to a specific high temperature. After reaching the target temperature, powerful cold air is blown uniformly across both the front and back surfaces of the glass at the same time to cool it rapidly. This whole thermal treatment process is called air quenching.
The fast and even cooling forms stable compressive stress on the glass surface and tensile stress inside the glass body. This unique internal stress structure brings distinct performance upgrades. Tempered glass products cover a wide thickness range from 1/8 inch to 3/4 inch, which can satisfy different construction and sports venue glass demands.
Property Changes Brought by Tempering
Tempered glass is approximately four times stronger than annealed glass of the same size and thickness. The tempering process only optimizes its bending and tensile strength, so the finished glass can better resist damage caused by heat deformation, strong wind pressure and external impact.
It is worth noting that tempering will not change most inherent properties of the original annealed glass. The color, chemical composition and light transmission of the glass stay consistent. Its compression resistance against crushing force, thermal conduction efficiency, thermal expansion rate and overall rigidity also remain unchanged after tempering.
Core Advantages of Tempered Glass
Tempered glass has better anti-deflection and wind resistance than heat-strengthened glass, which makes it ideal for outdoor facilities exposed to natural wind all year round. Its most valuable advantage is safety. When tempered glass suffers severe impact and breaks, it shatters into countless small, blunt cube fragments without sharp edges. This characteristic greatly reduces the risk of serious cuts and injuries to people, so it is recognized as qualified safety glazing material by global industry standards.
Besides, tempering greatly enhances the edge strength of glass panels. Designers often select tempered glass for areas with high thermal stress, such as large commercial storefronts and outdoor padel or pickleball court fences. Genuine tempered glass can be identified by a permanent printed marking at the glass corner.
Important Usage Restriction
There is an unignorable limitation for finished tempered glass. Once the tempering procedure is completed, the glass can no longer be cut, drilled or edge-polished. Any secondary physical processing will break the balanced internal stress, leading to spontaneous fragmentation of the whole panel.
All custom processing including size adjustment, hole drilling and edge finishing must be fully finished before the glass enters the tempering furnace.
