HaanGlas offer new VIG pillar options

What’s pillars in VIG?

If you have a close watched on vacuum insulating glass,you must be curious why there are some evenly distributed small black spots inside the glass, In fact, they are called micro support pillars and are essential to every piece of vacuum insulated glass.It’s the biggest feature of VIG.

New pillars are more visible at same distance,but after installation the black ceramic balls will disappear under backgrouds

Why pillars exist in vacuum double glazing?

The 2 panels glass will deform and move inward when VIG is subjected to atmospheric pressure ,which will affect the glass overall flatness and safety. In order to ensure the existence of its vacuum space, support pillars is placed between the two glass panels to withstand the atmospheric pressure.

The importance of micro pillars in vacuum glazing

Even though pillars is necessary,but designing the pillars and distance is the key point when designing and producing qualified VIG.

Micro support pillars in HaanGlas VIG

1. Micro support pillars quantity and size should be controlled.

Because the vacuum space eliminate the heat convection and heat transfer through air,but in vacuum glazing,Pillars size and contact area with glass panels will affect the heat conductivity and further affect the VIG final U value,meanwhile ,pillars will also affect glass appearance,and light transmittance.

2. Pillars ensure glass safety.

If pillars contacting area with glass is too small, the concentrated load will increase significantly because of atmospheric pressure and cause higher breakage ratio,especially in disaster weather such as hurricane and city areas high wind load.

3. Pillar materials& shape decide glass U value.

Pillars shape and materials can be divided in to steel balls,steel cylinder,ceramic balls,C shape steel pillars,and even steel rings.

4. Pillar affect glass overall appearance.

To ensure the best visual effect,pillars should be positioned equally and distance should be as large as possible,of course the premise is to ensure VIG safety.

That’s the reason why anneal vacuum double glazing has pillars distance only 20*20mm while tempered vacuum vacuum insulated glass can achieve 40*40mm and even 50*50mm distance.

Pillars in anneal vacuum glazing is small because of low glass strength

So, pillars materials, size, distance is related to glass safety,glass thermal conductivity and even glass lifetime.It’s the most important part of vacuum glazing.

HaanGlas Pillars description

Previously,HaanGlas adopted steel balls to work as support pillars,each group contains 3-4 micro balls diameter 0.3mm ,and pillars are positioned in diamond shape with 50*50mm distance.

The advantage are,

Pillars  realized the lowest contact area with glass,and are unnoticed at a distance of 500mm.

But ,production capability is limited because pillars placement takes lots of time ,the 0.3mm ball height also makes the vacuum space thicker and bring huger concentrated load to glass inner surface.

What’s new?

Recently HaanGlas developed new pillars for VIG Pro and offer more options for customers.

New pillars are made with black color ceramic balls,distance was adjusted to be 40*40mm in square shape.

HaanGlas VIG samples with new ceramic pillars

1. Black color avoid light spots after installation.

Many vacuum glazing manufacturers use clear,or translucent pillars ,even though it’s unnoticed when placing glass horizontally,but once after installation ,the pillars will refract sunlight and makes it more obvious.

When light transfer the glass,spots will appear in pillar areas

Black color ceramic pillars,even though it’s more visible,but after installation,it’s more unnoticed if there’s background after the glass.

2. Ceramic pillars has lower thermal conductivity than steel.

Steel thermal conductivity is 45W/M2.K, while ceramic ones has about 5.8W/M2.K thermal conductivity, even though more pillars exist, overall heat through pillars can be decreased much and realized better glass U value.

3. Decreased costs and higher production efficiency.

The smaller steel balls,the more expensive.

By changing steel balls to ceramic balls,pillar placement efficiency can be increased by 3 times ,delivery time is more friendly.

HaanGlas is your turnkey vacuum glazing solution supplier, we strive to keep researching and developing new technology for the earlier coming of VIG times,kindly contact us for your next great building.