Design Guidelines for Molded Sheet Glass

General Remark
Consider everything that you might already know in regard of thermoforming of plastic sheets ( www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoforming) to be possible for glass as well. 

Materials
Most glasses with coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) between 3.2 and 9.0 µm/m*K, e.g.:

• Soda Lime Float Glass
• Borofloat 33 ® (Schott)
• Gorilla Glass ® (Corning)
• aso.

Glass Size

• up to 20” * 33”

Glass Thickness

• 0.3 mm up to 40 mm

Basic features
Please be aware that the process is a single side tool based process. Thus it is only possible to directly control one side of the part. The other side is a mandatory result of the tool topography and the material thickness used.

In most cases it is possible to use either a female or a male mould approach. Thus you can control the side of the product that is of higher interest to you.

• You can mold
• Flat surfaces
• Curved surfaces of all kind
• Steps
• Recesses
• Protuberances
• Openings

• Almost all geometries can be combined as per customers demand
• Smallest feature size app. 200 µm
• Slope (Side wall angle): down to 0°, depending on material + overall design

Radius

• Tool side: down to 0 (sharp edge)
• Air side (non tool side): minimum radius = thickness of the glass

Stretching of the thickness
App. 5% of the glass thickness per mm cavity height/depth.

Please be aware that this value is strongly influenced by the overall design. Real values can vary to the plus or the minus. For critical applications we do recommend to run tests based on the real design for evaluation!

Surface: Smooth, rough, structured; uniformly or combined

Design potentials

• Logos imprinted into surface (3-D-relief)
• Surfaces with special haptic properties
• Glass housings
• Moulded openings

No-goes

• Undercuts (please ask, there might be some exceptions from the rules…)

 

For further information feel free to get in contact via phone or e-mail.