Pilkington Glass

[Rainbow]

Quick question - does Pilkington Glass still manufacture/supply 2mm glass or have they stopped it?

[fusionframer]

I think they may have stopped doing 2mm, but not 100% sure. The reason i think they may have is that my glazing company get my double glazed units and toughened glass from pilkington. They also do the self cleaning glass for conservatories. Where do they get their 2mm glass from? Wessex pictures of course!

A few years back, the 2mm came from pilkington as well. It may be a price issue, but I know pilkington are flat out with double glazing.

Nick

[Not your average framer]

Pilkington Glass was doing some very new and amazing things in the 1960's and I remember it well as I was at that time a young apprentice design engineer. This was the era of floor to ceiling glass shop fronts, unbreakable windows for high rise building, large glass pateo dors and laminated car windscreens. It was all about new technologies and it was changing lots of things in technology. I was working in the radio and tevevision manufacturing field and television screen sizes were getting big and I was in at the start of the colour television creation. Larger television screens introuced the need for amoured glass in the front of these very large television screens and the was only one company who knew how to make this and that was Pilkingtons. The motor industry wanted new safer car windscreens, but there was a prblem in doing this. There had been a lot of interest in making laminated windscreen, however to do this meant producing thin glass which was free of optical aberations. The only way to do this was to produce extremely pure float glass by floating the glass on an extremely pure bath of molten tin.

Pilkington's were the clever people, who created the process and laminated two sheets of 2mm thick glass on either side of an impact absorbent inner plastic layer. This is how we got our laminated safety glass windscreens and pilkingtons needed to product optionally aberation free 2mm glass in order to do this. As an offshoot by product for picture framing they desided to also sell 2mm glass for picture framing. During those days, there were a lot of patents involved in just about everything which Pilkington was producing, but Pilkington had borrowed a lot of money from the government and the government had taken shares in Pilkington as a resut. During a bad period the government sold their shares in Pilkingtons to Japan and Pilkington's lost control of their own business and cheaper company started making high tech glasses at prices which harmed Pilkington's market possition. Normal float glass and mirror glass is no longer economical to produce in this country and even the Pilkington mirror glass is produced overseas and has not been produced by Pilkingtons since about approximately the 1980's.

Does anyone remember the name of the Hungarian companies that made really top class 2mm glas, that we all were using until about 15 to 20 years ago, they were at the time the best 2mm thick float glass which you could get, but the time came when russia greatly increased to cost of gas to Hungary and now almost all 2mm glass now comes from the far east. Over the years, I worked for lots of companies which were mayor companies on the world stage, but most of them are either long gone, or were sold to other countries like Japan, or China. I was told as a young design engineer that I should be in demand within British industry for the rest of my working life and I belieced it too. Much of the volume side of British industry is long gone and I have not been able to persue what was my chosen career since the 1990's. That's how I had to become self employed doing various other things. Alas for Pilkington Glass, they were number one in the world in those days!

[Steve N]

way back around 2010, I heared a rumor that they had opened up factories in China

[Not your average framer]

Hi Steve,

That sounds about right to me!

[Rainbow]

Thanks for the replies, all very interesting!

[JFeig]

Guardian Glass owns a float glass plant in Hungary.