Technical Glass Department - Products & Capabilities

The Technical Glass Department of Flabeg Corporation offers over fifty years of coating experience to our customers. We provide a multitude of standard products as well as the ability to design coatings for unique applications. Our standard and special coatings are applied to all types of glass, metal or plastic. Flabeg Corporation, formerly Pilkington Technical Mirrors and Liberty Mirror Company, is fully equipped with large vacuum deposition chambers to meet your production requirements. The following items summarize the diversity or our coating expertise and experience.

Beamsplitter coatings utilized in teleprompters, flight simulation, ground training simulator devices and simulation devices for the entertainment/amusement industry. A broad range of beamsplitter coatings are available with or without anti-reflection coatings on the opposite surface of the glass.

Large front surface mirrors for projection systems and telescope mirrors coated with our Enhanced Aluminum yields a reflectivity of 94% minimum average in the visible range. The largest of our vacuum deposition chambers is 142" in diameter. This large chamber has been utilized in coating telescope mirrors as large as 80" in diameter. Front surface mirrors are also produced for use as fold mirrors for application in the ophthalmic industry arena as well as numerous additional operations. Aluminum coatings for use in the visible, as well as U. V. coating applications are available, as are large chrome panels.

Dichroic films have been produced at this facility for over thirty years for use in the medical instrumentation industry. With our ability to coat larger and larger glass panels with dichroic coatings the product has become a popular tool for the architectural and construction industries. This product has become a unique architectural implementation due to the distinctive characteristics of the film. The dichroic effect is generated by evaporating layers of transparent dielectric materials of differing refractive index to precisely controlled microscopic thicknesses. The visible results are that light transmitted through the dichroic surface will appear one color and light reflected from it will appear as a complementary color. As the angle at which the dichroic is viewed changes, the color that is transmitted and reflected also changes. Our organization has the capability of producing dichroic coatings in stock sheet sizes of 44.5" x 51," in larger sizes of 54" x 70" and 49" x 89" by modification and various other sizes with additional design and engineering. Dichroic coatings are currently being used world-wide in the art industry as well as in construction industries as a unique and extraordinary manifestation of light transmission and reflection.

Anti-Reflection films are applied to instrument dial covers and various lenses to decrease the reflections on instrumentation covers and various lenses. Two types of anti-reflection coatings are available for application on glass. Our Standard Low Reflection will reduce reflectance to less than 1.5% at minimum point on substrates with an index of refraction of 1.52. Our Hi-Efficiency Low Reflection coating is a multi-layer application that will reduce reflectance to .5% average from 425 to 700 millimicrons per surface.

Electrically Conductive films are produced primarily for glass optical elements that must not be appreciably changed by processing or heating operations. We offer electrically conductive coatings with properties of approximately 7-13 ohms per square resistively with visible light transmission of approximately 78% when applied to commercial float glass. Commercial uses are for defogging of optical and instrument faces and windows, prisms, lenses and other optical elements in instrumentation panels.

Although the Specialty Glass Department of Flabeg Corporation is best known for its thin film coating achievements, we also have fabrication capabilities. With the ability to do edge grinding and beveling, drilling, precision cutting and blanchard grinding, we fabricate a wide assortment of innovative components, among them camera windows, light lenses and identification lenses for commercial aircraft.

The capabilities of our Specialty Glass Department are best exemplified by the diversity of our products and services. The largest of our seventeen vacuum coating chambers is 142" in diameter. This equipment has been utilized in coating two meter telescope mirrors, audio visual displays, and flight simulation mirrors three meters in diagonal length.

Beamsplitter films that are used in teleprompters, flight, and ground training devices are also recognized as industry standards.

We have a host of standard products including dichroic filters, anti-reflection films, various metal films, as well as the ability to design coatings for unique applications.

Automotive mirrors requiring quality chrome coating are currently being produced on high volume, sputtering lines at Flabeg. Research and development of advanced coating systems for new and traditional applications are a part of daily business.