Structural glazing is here to stay. Thanks to its excellent performance in terms of thermal insulation and life cycle costs, elegant, translucent facade designs are a growing trend where sustainable building is concerned. Every change, no matter how small, which contributes towards an improvement in the quality and durability of a glass facade is therefore welcome in the field of glass construction.
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New world record for XXL glass
Edgetech
The primary seal is of particular importance in structural glazing due to the fact the UV-resistant silicone secondary sealants are gas permeable. The primary sealant – usually polyisobutylene – extruded onto the sides of the spacer and bonded to the inside of the glass pane bears the main load of keeping the edge seal gas-tight throughout and preventing vapour diffusion into the space between the panes. "We wanted to take this into account and have developed our new special product for structural glazing and XXL glass panes in close cooperation with a leading manufacturer of insulating glass panes for commercial buildings," states Joachim Stoss, Managing Director of Edgetech Europe GmbH and Vice President of International Sales at Quanex.
The outer dimensions remain unchanged compared to Super Spacer T-Spacer Premium Plus, but the manufacturer increased the lateral areas in order to apply the polyisobutylene. The new spacer design also assists the application to be precise right down to the last millimetre of the spacer before the secondary seal is applied on the automated insulating glass line. " This means that the parallelism and low tolerances of the spacers in large multi-pane insulating glass units are even more precise and the robustness of the system is further increased. This is particularly important where high pane dimensions and pane weights are involved, alongside the expected long service life of facade elements," adds Christoph Rubel, European Technical Manager at Edgetech Europe GmbH.
Edgetech
As with all products manufactured by Edgetech, Super Spacer T-Spacer SG is a metal-free, silicone-based warm edge spacer made of structural foam with an integrated desiccant. It also offers excellent thermal insulation properties by virtue of its low thermal conductivity of 0.19 W/mK. The spacer’s composition offers enhanced shape memory which is very important for the long-term integrity of the edge compound. The elastic structural foam follows the climate-related movements of the glass, relieving a large proportion of the load from the butyl seal. This represents an invaluable advantage especially in climate zones with very low, very high or strongly fluctuating temperatures.
