
During the year 2022 important results were obtained by IOCCO.
In addition to aesthetic polyurethane extrusion systems on windshields, and various other robotic assembly lines with artificial vision systems, special bag and ring furnaces for the deairing of autoglass have been designed, then manufactured and commissioned, and this over than standard bag and ring furnaces which are part for long time of our normal production.
Our starting point was represented by latest significant engineering development carried out during the years 2020 and 2021 (link).
This new development allowed IOCCO to create and to commission the first Bag Furnace for laminated windshields and roof glass with multilayer technologies for automotives having maximum dimensions of 2400mm x 2000mm and maximum curvatures of 350mm.
Currently this is the largest Bag Furnace for big glass produced on the market.
In addition, it has been designed and built the first high-capacity deairing Bag Furnace for laminated sidelights as double-row, having the thickness of the inner panel as 0.7mm (this means one sidelight every 9 seconds).
Currently this is the fastest Bag Furnace for sidelights ever produced on the market.
Another challenge, very important, has been won!
After about 12 months of R&D efforts, IOCCO Team installed and commissioned a deairing Bag Furnace with important upgrades in December 2022.
The Bag furnace has been customized to reach high process temperatures needed for the innovative laminate type to produce.
The furnace has been equipped with a very efficient cooling system that ensures low end-of-process temperatures, and this just to avoid bubbles on the edges of laminated glass.
In addition, a system that anticipates the vacuum into the bag has been developed.
This is a system that ensures the correct locking of the layers that compose the laminated glass: in fact, the locking takes place since from the deposit phase inside the bag, and avoids the movements of the layers that would cause production waste.
This furnace represents the first system in the world able to laminate three glass panels with very high technological contents by means of various layers, including EVA, and that require for this reason heating and cooling temperatures over the standard.
This system has been also developed on the basis of the model our new Bag Furnace, and that was anticipated in our previous article (link).
Said latest achievements confirm the market trend of the car manufacturers in using multi-layer laminated glazing in complex geometric shapes, and this not only in the conventional production of windshields, but also for roofs and side windows with high technological contents.
This also confirms the need to have versatile lines and production systems, able to make immediate product production changes.
These reasons, in addition to our great experience gained over the years and our countless installations, more and more make IOCCO as the right interlocutor for this particular process.
The R&D Team is already working on the development of important innovations that will be officially presented by the end of 2023. The innovations we are carrying out aim to make our deairing systems increasingly easy to use, increasingly intelligent with particular attention to the energy consumption and the maintenance costs, in addition to the virtual accompaniment during the maintenance thanks to augmented reality systems.