Bodycote Hot Isostatic Pressing

HOT ISOSTATIC PRESSING (HIP) OFFERS THE POSSIBILITY OF ELIMINATING POROSITY OR BUBBLES AND OF HOMOGENISING MATERIALS AND IMPROVING THEIR PROPERTIES.

This is important for glass as HIP purifies and normalizes the material, thereby uprating mechanical properties and making the glass perfectly transparent.

The Bodycote HIP division offers a HIP service as an integral part of the production route for such high quality parts.

A Universal Material

Few materials have such wide compositional variations as glass, a material made from the natural components lime, soda and sand.

Glass is encountered as an everyday material in applications varying from windows to eyeglasses - it is also a high technology material.

Many technical processes do not work without glass - such glass must generally be of high purity and free from defects.

Microchips, Internet & Multimedia

Computer systems and data transmission networks would not function without glass.

Modern hard discs are made of glass. Planity is better than that of discs made of other materials.

The internet cannot work without glass, the material of optical fibres.

Glass fibre optics enable billions of bits of information per second to be transmitted by light-waves over thousands of kilometres: the information highway.

The deciding factor in the optical conductivity of the cables is the quality of the glass used for the fibre optics.

A high product quality without defects is required to guarantee high transmission rates.

Optical chips have the potential to take microelectronics one further step forward:

As light is the fastest transmission medium, a processor made of glass could transfer data in form of light rather than as electrical impulses.

Special glasses are used as substrate material for this kind of optical chip.

Conventional semiconductor chips may use high technology glasses made from synthetic quartz.

There may be up to 30 elements in a single lens used for the production of the structure of microchips.

Without laser and optical glasses CD players, video CDs and CD roms would not be possilble.

Information:
Glas - Das Erfolgsgeheimnis eines
Universalwerkstoffes
Bundesverband Glasindustrie und
Mineralfaserindustrie e.V. Düsseldorf, 1996

Applications:

Optics

Glass fibres

Semiconductor industry

Chemical industry

Automotive

Architecture

Energy

Medicine