Why your shower door glass exploded?

 The shower room is loved by consumers for its advantages such as small space, but it is disturbing that the  shower door glass has a spontaneous explosion rate of 3‰,whether it’s frameless shower door or framed ones. If you are not careful, your personal safety will be threatened. “Why does shower door glass explode?” The quality and safety of the shower room has become the most concerned issue for consumers

CASE STUDY :People get hurt for glass explosion.

Last month, Ms. Wong gave the child a bath at home, but the family were all injured.

Ms. Wong “I was about to close the door and found that the door magnet didn’t work.Unexpectedly, just after Ms. Pei’s husband’s hand was placed on the tempered glass door ,the glass exploded.The glass exploded from the middle and all hit my back.

Ms. Wong’s back, legs and hands were all scratched by glass, and there were obvious wounds on her husband’s arms.

shower door glass spontaneous breakage

What caused shower door glass explosion?

Why does the shower room explode? Many people naturally associate the shower room with the temperature difference? Is it really? Next, use three experiments to prove, everyone pay attention to it~

Test 1:Is the shower room explosion caused by uneven heating?

In the hot summer, the highest temperature of the glass surface is about 65℃.

When hitting the tempered glass with a hammer a few times, and the glass was intact.

Hitting tempered glass at 65 degree

Next, start to heating the glass with a spray gun for 10 minutes until the glass temperature reaches 300°C, but there is no problem.

heating glass to 300 degrees

This also means that the temperature will not leading to tempered glass spontaneous explosion.

Now let’s see if the shower room bursts due to the alternating cold and hot in the bathroom?

We use cold water to pour directly on the glass in the high temperature of 300 ℃. the tempered glass suddenly encountered cold water but smoked a little, but did not burst.

cold water cannot cause glass breakage

In fact, high-quality tempered glass encountered a heating process (650-700 degrees) and fast cooling process,After a special process, the general temperature will not cause the tempered glass to explode.

Test 2:Is the shower room explosion caused by float glass quality?

The deciding reason for glass spontaneous explosion is the float glass used, because the float itself contains impurities—nickel sulfide. The more impurities and bubbles, the higher the rate of spontaneous explosion.

Next, use low-quality tempered glass that is cheaper and has obvious impurities to continue the experiment.

impurity inside glass

The tempered glass temperature has increased by 200℃, and pour cold water on the glass.

When cold water touched the glass, the glass broke and collapsed in less than 2 seconds.

poor quality glass broken under cold water

There are sulfide stones in this glass. After the experiment, the sulfide stones cause micro-cracks in the glass, which causes the glass to explode spontaneously.

Uneven heat and cold is the inducement of the glass explosion, and the fundamental reason is bad glass quality. There are impurities in the float glass, which will change the stress of the whole glass and cause spontaneous explosion when affected by the temperature difference. Therefore, do not buy cheap shower room.

 

Test 3:Improper installation also leading to glass explosion.

Two pieces quality tempered glass, the same size and the same thickness,.

One piece without any processing.

The other one is reinforced at 4 corners, 3 loose and 1 tight, let’s see if there is any glass firmness difference.When installing reinforced tempered glass, it is required to to have even force around it. But testers deliberately tightened the screw in one of the corners to simulate improper installation.

glass test 3 to test if installation affect glass strength

The tempered glass that has not been treated has been smashed a lot and no broken.

glass impact test-untreated glass

The reinforced toughened glass broke very soon.

Therefore, toughened glass that looks very durable will become very fragile as long as the stress structure changes.

 

This shows how important shower room installation is. Therefore, everyone must go to the physical store to buy the shower room. Not only can you intuitively see the quality , but also the physical store can give you professional services.

Below is the full process of the test:

Learn more about glass spontaneous breakage:The reason of tempered glass self explosion

How shall we purchase the right shower door?

1. Check glass quality.

• A good shower room has transparent glass and no defects such as dots and bubbles.
• There is tempering logoon the glass corner.

TEMPERED GLASS LOGO-MORN-SGCC-KITEMARK-CHINA-GLASS

2. 
   

   Check aluminium profiles

• Look at the hardness of aluminum

The thickness of the qualified shower room aluminum profile is above 1.2mm,The hardness of aluminum can be tested by pressing the aluminum frame by hand. Aluminum with a hardness of 13 degrees or more is difficult for an adult to deform by pressing it by hand.

• A good shower room has a smooth surface, no chromatic aberration and perfect surface treatment.

shower room with aluminium profiles and hardware

3. 
   

   Check the hardware

The slider and the track should be closely matched, with a small gap, and not easy to fall off when impacted by external forces to avoid safety accidents. Use 304 and even 316 stainless steel hardware to ensure quality.

4. Check shower door water tightness

The main checking points of the water tightness of the shower room are

• The connection between the shower room and the wall
• The joint between the door and the door
• The connection between the shower room and the stone base and the bottom basin
• Check the sealability of the rubber strip and the rubber strip

More details ,please refer to our post:How to select the right bathroom shower door

Morn is your quality shower door glass manufacturer and supplier in China,we work with CSG,XYG high quality raw materials and precise processing to avoid crackles,scratches,or any other defects that causing possible glass breakage,contact us if any requirement.

Download our article here:Why your shower door glass exploded

China float glass price trend analysis-2021&2022

 Since 2021, affected by multiple factors, the price of China float glass has increased significantly compared with 2020, which has caused a greater reaction from downstream enterprises(glass processors,facade contractors,real estate developers) . Especially after May,2021, frequent tight supply of float glass has been, and the price has been running at a high level and continuously rising. In August, float glass industry listed companies have successively released performance reports for the first half of 2021. Benefiting from the high prosperity, the performance of these flat glass companies is very gratifying.

float glass production lines in China

The price of flat glass has risen rapidly, but the price transmission from upstream to downstream is not smooth. Glass deep processing companies that do not have their own flat glass production lines, have to purchase raw materials at high prices and then selling the products at a loss. On May 29 this 2021, seven glass deep-processing industry associations(Henan,Shanxi,Hunan,Ningxia,Luoyang,Wuhan,Hefei) gathered in Huangshan City, and issued an appeal to relevant state ministries and commissions to investigate the abnormal float glass price increase.

The Politburo meeting held on July 30 also pointed out that the current global epidemic is still evolving, the external environment has become more complex and severe, and the domestic economic recovery is still unstable and uneven; it is necessary to “do a good job in ensuring the supply of bulk commodities and stabilizing prices.” On August 3, the China government also held a flat glass price symposium. Lv Guixin, the first-level inspector of the Raw Materials Department, said bluntly: At present, the continuous price increase under the background of excessive production capacity,the situation is out of the fundamentals of the industry, and the policy does not allow it. It is necessary to fully realize the harm caused by the excessive and rapid rise of the original price.

 

What are the consequences of fast and continuous price increase of flat glass prices?

What causes its price misalignment to be so serious?

Will prices fall before 2021?

How can we avoid recurring waves in the industry?

Multi factors affect float glass price in 2021 China-morn

China Float glass price keep increasing

The rate of increase of float glass in 2021 is the highest since the abolition of the national glass distribution price in 1993.Said Mr Sun Xingshou, deputy secretary general of China Building Materials Federation.

After the outbreak of the Covid-19 in early 2020, the production and sales of the float glass industry have shrunk sharply, and prices falled sharply. In April 2020, the price of flat glass fell to a low record to USD210/MT. With the joint efforts of the industry to promote the resumption of work and production, the price of float glass will gradually recover after May 2020. In 2020 August, it recovered to normal price level USD295/MT, and climbed to USD350/MT at the end of the year. Since 2021, the price of flat glass has declined first and then increased, and has accelerated after May, reaching a peak of USD500/MT in August,2021,it’s already much higher than global average price.

China-float-glass-price-trend-2020-2021

The excessively high and rapid increase has caused great response from downstream enterprises and some users in the industry chain. Glass deep processing enterprises are in the middle a of the industrial chain, and are dominated by small, medium sized enterprises, with weak bargaining power and weak transmission and digestion of cost pressures.

“We’ll customers if no delivery, but huge loss if deliver glass”. Many companies want to delay the delivery date, thinking that a little bit less loss.” According to a description by deep processing company boss, in May 2021,When the rise was the most intense,daily rise is very common. However, due to poor downstream price transmission and upstream raw material prices increase, it is very difficult for them to “live” under the attack of both ends.

The upstream and downstream industries are inseparable from each other. From a deeper point of view, the price of flat glass is too high and too fast to rise, which may also endanger the effectiveness of the flat glass industry in resolving overcapacity and supply-side structural reforms in recent years.

According to Sun Xingshou’s recollection, the problem of overcapacity of float glass began in 2009. Under the loose macro policies at the time, high domestic infrastructure demand drove a large number of float glass production capacity. In 2008, the production capacity of flat glass was 33.5 million tons, which surged to 38 million tons in 2009, and there are more than 5 million tons under construction. At that time, there was a serious overcapacity problem in the entire industry, and the utilization rate of capacity gradually declined, and the price of flat glass was also declining.

In the next few years, government departments successively issued de-capacity documents, prohibiting new and expanding float glass production capacity projects, strictly implement the new capacity replacement policy in order to contain and resolve the problem of overcapacity. Float glass also achieved rapid growth in production and sales without increasing production capacity.

In 2021,Sep,the industry has 299 effective production lines with a production capacity of 197,600 tons/day; 265 production lines with a production capacity of 175,500 tons/day.

From January to September,2021, the industry statistic is as below:

• 14 production lines were resumed, with a production capacity of +9900 tons/day;
• 6 new float glass lines, with a production capacity of +4000 tons/day;
• 8 cold repair lines (2 had resumed production), with a production capacity of -5350 tons/day;

Compared with the beginning of the 2021, the production capacity is +5.12%. and the production capacity is at a historical high.

float glass stocks

Multi factors affect price increase

1. 
   

   Raw materials increase.

Since the beginning of 2021, the prices of bulk commodities and raw materials have risen considerably, which has brought certain cost pressures to the flat glass industry. Taking Guangdong as an example, the quartz sand used for glass production has an increase of 50%; the quartz sand for ultra-white glass rose by more than 80%; soda ash price rose over 40%, and fuels such as natural gas have also increased by more than 10% recently. “Overall, the production cost of float glass has risen by more than 12.5%.”

2. 
   

   The sharp reduction in inventory is also the direct reason.

Key flat glass companies have maintained low inventories this year. In the past, under normal circumstances, corporate inventory was basically maintained at 20 days. In 2021 It has dropped to about 10 days, sometimes even less than 10 days.”

3. 
   

   The strong pull from the demand side cannot be underestimated.

The outbreak of the Covid-19 in early 2020 has caused the real estate delayed delivery time, and the real estate market has substantially “cleared inventory” . The data shows that from January to June this year, the floor space of houses completed nationwide was 364.81 million square meters, a year-on-year increase of 25.7%, of which the growth rate in June reached 66.5%. In particular, large-scale promotion of energy-saving doors and windows in shed renovation and renovation of old communities has made the demand for glass in the construction sector more obvious.

4. 
   

   Government policy.

Due to environmental protection reasons, Xingtai, Tangshan and other regions limited production in recent years, resulting in a tight supply of flat glass in stages and pushing up the glass market price.

5. 
   

   Additional factors such as capital intervention, hoarding, and abusing pricing power, etc.

   The doping of factors eventually led to the abnormal price. The act of hoarding float glass not only involves float glass manufacturers and distributors, but also deep-processing enterprises. The emergence of these excessive speculations not only contributed to the price increase, but also disrupted the normal production and sales cycle.

China float glass price ikeep increasing in 2021

 Price will keep high in balance 2021

September and October is the traditional peak season of glass industry,but 2021 is different.

The overall market trading atmosphere is stable, the fulfillment rate of order delivery has declined, demand has weakened slightly compared with August, and the enthusiasm for downstream purchases is weak.

Since July, due to extreme weather, repeated epidemics, delayed demand and other factors, the industry’s inventory has continued to increase. The average inventory days this week is close to 15 days, +4.9 days from the August, but the overall inventory of the industry is still at a low level.

The construction progress of the project was affected, and the processing plants were cautious in receiving orders to control the capital risk. Some enterprises’ orders generally even weakened slightly; the phenomenon of reminding orders for finished goods decreased, and the pressure on finished goods inventory of processing plants increased. On the whole, the price of glass is at a high level, terminal payment is slow, processing companies are cautious about rising material costs, and short-term demand may continue to be flat, but terminal demand will only be late and will not be absent.

The current price increase is due to the explosive growth of demand, which has led to fluctuations in the relationship between supply and demand in the short term.China has always encouraged the promotion of energy-saving insulating glass. “From one piece to two pieces,and then triple insulated glass three pieces.”  the proportion of demand for flat glass will increase further in the second half of the year.

Flat glass is included in the “two high” (high energy consumption, high pollution) industries.

Under the guidance of the “dual-carbon” goal, the supply of flat glass production capacity will not increase much, and the environmental pressure on enterprises will also increase further.

float glass production lines in China-high price in 2021

But some guys offered different opinion:

1. As the float glass line cold repair and capacity replacement are put into production, the supply is gradually increasing;
2. After the peak of the real estate market, the domestic market demand will decline.
3. This round of price increases is something that both the supply and demand sides are unwilling to see, and both hope to fall back. “
4. Domestic prices are likely to fall, and by the end of 2021, they may gradually return to the state at the beginning of 2021, and will be further adjusted after the first half of 2022.”

Morn Opinion:

As glass trading company,Morn has seen that glass export,both float glass and processed glass products decreased significantly compared with 2020.In addition to 10-20 times increased shipping fees,the glass trading companies survive is quite difficult,China glass industry is losing its competitive in global market.

float glass ready to export-China morn

With decreased export requirement,the cooling down of China real estate industry,the float glass price will keep relatively stable and in next few years will keep USD390-450/MT.

Nobody will benefit from the high price except float glass manufacturers,we sincerely hope below measurements been implemented:

1. Strengthening the collection and sorting of information such as changes in flat glass production capacity and changes in market supply and demand, and timely release to effectively prevent market fluctuations and price fluctuations caused by information asymmetry.
2. Glass processors should develop new and creative products to increase the export competition advantage.
3. Stop and punish the behaviors that affect normal market price.

Download this article:China float glass price trend analysis-2021&2022

Glass processing-Digital printing VS UV printing

 High temperature printed glass,is an artistic glass product produced in tempering furnace whose temperature over 650°C,under the high temperature,the inks got sintered on glass surface permanently. As a construction and decoration material, high temperature printed glass has beautiful, shading and other functions, and is widely used in building decoration, house decoration and other industries.

The traditional high temperature printed glass is to print inorganic glaze on the surface of flat glass through screen printing process, and then dry (usually not exceed 200 ℃), sintering (600~700℃ tempering treatement) , the glass ink is permanently sintered to the glass surface, thereby obtaining a glass product with abrasion resistance, acid and alkali resistance, UV and infrared resistance. The product can design patterns according to customer needs and obtain decorative materials with artistic effects and special structural functions. Usually the screen printing pattern is relatively simple.

various colors digital print can achieve-Morn glass

In recent years, with the maturity of digital printing technology, digital printed glass has been quickly applied in indoor and outdoor decoration due to its beautiful patterns and bright colors.

UV printing glass is an earlier generation of full-color digital printing technology that replaces the screen printing process. It is suitable for all kinds of organic substrates such as signs, PVC, acrylic, plastic, leather, cloth, wood board, etc., and there are also attempts to carry out UV printing processing on the surface of metal, glass, stone and so on. Since there was no printing process specifically for glass earlier, and UV printing can achieve rich pattern effects in the environment at the time, UV printing glass has also been accepted and applied by many designers within a certain safety limit.

Digital printing VS UV printing

Both digital printing and UV printing process on glass surface,both has the advantages of rapid realization in  graphic patterns, and the advantages of flexible graphic pattern design. It is designed in many glass applications that require personalized decoration. But the properties of their materials are completely different. Comprehensive consideration is required in the design and application of glass to avoid the failure or errors.

Digitally printed glass products-produced by Dip-tech-Morn

Below table shows the difference between digitally printed glass and UV printed glass.

Edit

	Digital printed glass	UV printed glass
Principle of solidification	High temperature solidificationn-650℃	UV lighting solidification
Colors	Full colors	Full colors
Transparency	Can achieve any color transparency	Cannot
Outdoor application	Yes	No
Further processing	Can be further tempered,laminated ,insulated	No.
Tempered glass	Can be tempered,high temperature resistance-800℃	Cannot be tempered,low temperature resisitance-120℃
Curved glass	Can be made curved tempered or hot bending process	Cannot be made into curved glass
Exposion	Can be exposed in outdoor	Printed side cannot be exposed in outdoor
Firmness	Scratch resistance,surface hardness-6H	Finger nail can scratch glass surface
Weather ability	No fading,no falling	Started fading and falling within 3 months in outdoor
Lifetime	Same as glass itself	2-3 years in indoor area
Alcohol/water resistance	Good	Falling under high mositure environment
Acid/alkali resistance	5% acid&alkali immerse,no change	Falling
Applied substrates	Glass	Glass,metal,tiles,PVC,ETC

Based on above table,compared with UV printed glass,digital printed glass has below advantages:

1. Digitally printed glass can be used in outdoor.

The solidification principle of digital printing glass is to integrate the ceramic digital printing ink into the glass surface after high temperature sintering process. The toner in the ink is mined from various minerals in nature, so it has the ability to blend naturally with glass (the main component SiO₂). , And the performance that will not change color after decades.

The inks materials decide the printed glass has perfect weather resistance,acid&alkali resistance,alcohol&water resistance.,it can be used in outdoor glass projects for decades and same lifetime as glass itself.

“Dip-Tech” has been developing digital printing since 2005. Digitally printed glass is applied in global projects in various regional climates for over 10 years, and has demonstrated its excellent weather resistance in interior and exterior projects.

Outdoor application of digital printed glass-China Morn Glass

UV printed glass shortage:

• UV printed glass use organic inks,In the acid and alkali resistance test and the alcohol resistance test, the UV ink formed wrinkles and fell off.
• In terms of weather resistance, UV printed glass begins to change color in 30 days in a natural environment, and cracks and curls begin to form after three months; in indoor project applications, the glass is UV-printed glass can be used for 2-3 years.
• Because UV ink has poor adhesion on smooth glass surface, it can be easily scratched with nails or sharp tools.

Quality problem of UV printed glass

2. Digitally printed glass can control the color transparency.

The process design of Dip-Tech ceramic digital printing is quite perfect. It can easily achieve various light transmittance requirements of any area and any graphic by customizing the color transparency and controlling the printing ink volume in the printing process.

DIGITAL PRINTING can achieve color transparency

Gradient glass with gradient color effect can be achieved benefiting from this advantage.

Gradient color effect of digital printed glass

Some high-end UV printing equipment also has the function of adjusting the ink volume, but organic ink still cannot produce the effect of high opacity, so common color UV single-layer printing is transparent color effect.

3.Digital printed glass can be further made into tempered,laminated glass,and insulated glass.

The solidification principle of ceramic digital printing is to melt through the tempering process of 680-720℃, so it must be tempered after printing.

The tempering process include tempering,heat strengthen,heat soaked,curved,hot bending ,as well as further laminating and insulating process to increase the glass safety and energy saving performance.

curved glass partition made with digital printed glass-China Morn

Tha maximum temperature of UV inks is 120 ℃，glass cannot be tempered and further processing,to increase the glass safety,UV printing must be applied on already flat tempered glass.

digital printed glass applied in exterior glass facade

With the advancement of industrial printing technology, the accuracy of digital printing has gradually increased from 300dpi to 1200dpi or even higher, and its printing speed has also increased from the initial 10sqm/h hour to more than 100sqm/h. Digital printing technology realizes complex color matching, vividly presenting artistic portraits and natural scenery on colorful glass, and its visible light transmittance and reflection effect are also better.

Morn work with China leading glass processors manufacturing&supplying high quality digitally printed glass with DIp-tech.If you would like to know the digital printed glass price for your project,or planing to build your unique colorful glass facade with digital printed glass,kindly contact us and let out DIP-tech glass decorate your next great building.

Download this article here:Glass processing-Digital printing VS UV printing