HEGLA boraident company philosophy

With its new solution for the post-installation functionalisation of facades and windows, HEGLA boraident plans to attract attention at this year’s Vitrum.

Up to 100 million birds die in Europe each year because they cannot detect glass facades, bus stops, balcony glazing, greenhouses and windows as obstacles in time. Collisions with glass are the biggest unnatural cause of bird deaths – despite the fact that bird strikes can be prevented. HEGLA boraident from Halle offers laser printing as a method for preventing bird strikes, and its effectiveness has now been certified.

Thanks to laser technology, the glass industry can do something that would be almost inconceivable in any other sector. Laser finishing treatment enables manufacturers to enhance the value of largely standardised products and increase their functionality. With prices for traditional IG units and facade cladding coming under increasing pressure, using laser upgrades to create bird protection glass, RF-transparent glass and anti-bacterial glass gives manufacturers the chance to tap into new target markets and increase their profit margins.

ES-GuardS, the advanced laser marking system from HEGLA boraident, makes non-destructive, permanent marks on glass without influencing the material’s properties. If the marking is made in the form of a QR or data matrix code, the pane will be uniquely identifiable at all times. And if the marking process is fully automated and carried out prior to cutting, later mix-ups will be virtually impossible.

The laws of physics cannot really resolve it: glass that features a low-E or another type of wear layer to improve its insulating properties, has a significantly reduced heat transfer coefficient, which improves the pane’s thermal insulation. The down side, however, is that the layer minimises the pane’s level of penetrability for high-frequency wireless communication waves. Communication with mobile phones or tablets is only limited in the best case scenario and impossible in the worst. Physically speaking, the problem is easy enough to identify. if the panes or the glass front are finished with a metallic coating, the building envelope acts like a Faraday cage involving a large proportion of glass and metal. This either prevents the penetration of wireless communications entirely or severely impairs them as a result of the unintentional reflection of the signals.

There are as many good reasons to pin information or product data to a processed glass panel as there are for chalk marking or sticking down labels. As a new process with expanded functionality, laser marking with its enhanced features is becoming increasingly popular.

Following a very brief period of insolvency after the company fell into financial difficulties, the 17 employees of boraident in Halle an der Saale (Saxony-Anhalt, Germany) can breathe a sigh of relief. The HEGLA Group, headquartered in Beverungen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (with approx. 550 employees worldwide), is taking over the site on 5th October, 2017. All current employees and patents will be incorporated into the newly founded HEGLA boraident GmbH & Co. KG.