Control and Continue: Unpredictable Times Call for Steady Improvements
By Joe Erb
We’re one quarter into 2025 and a theme for the year might be “unpredictability.” Our industry continues to grapple with supply chain and logistical challenges, a skilled labor deficit as veteran employees age out of the workforce, increasing raw material costs, and a volatile domestic political environment.
By the time this column is published, we may have already had to navigate another form of change (for example, tariffs). The best thing a manufacturer can do in such an environment, in my opinion, is to control what you can control. Continue to focus on what you do best, because a continued focus on product quality and customer service is a good recipe for success under any conditions.
To those ends, one thing you can control is your selection of the high-performance components that make up your finished products. In light of today’s demands—and challenges—an optimal choice for your insulating glass units (IGUs) is warm-edge spacer technology. Let’s explore a few reasons why.
Meeting Today’s Energy Demands
Regulatory pressure to improve energy efficiency for doors and windows may fade a bit under the new administration, but today thermal efficiency is the expectation; consumers want it, and that doesn’t seem likely to change. To meet those demands, warm-edge spacer technology can deliver significant improvements in the thermal performance of your IGUs by reducing heat flow through the edge of the glass.
Flexible foam technologies tend to offer the highest level of thermal performance, and they also provide another critical benefit for today’s modern manufacturing techniques: compatibility. Flexible warm-edge systems are inherently compatible with high-speed, automated production lines for IGUs, offering greatly enhanced production efficiency and decreased labor requirements. Considering the challenges outlined in the beginning of this piece, it’s a significant value proposition for any door and window manufacturer. This is something to consider whether you’ve already invested in an automated production line or are considering doing so in the near future.
Elsewhere, warm-edge technologies offer good compatibility with advanced IG systems, such as thin triples. Compared with a traditional triple-pane IGU, which uses three conventional pieces of glass to create two pockets of insulation, a skinny (or thin) triple utilizes an ultrathin center lite that is typically between 0.7 mm and 1.3 mm thick. Filled with an inert gas, these units can deliver outstanding thermal performance.
If warm-edge systems are unfamiliar to your manufacturing processes, technical support from your suppliers can be invaluable as you bring the new system online.
Consider that the fabrication process is considerably different when compared with rigid spacer options.
Flexible warm-edge spacers come fully integrated (including desiccant) without an assembly process required. The systems are delivered to the application process on continuous reels and are then applied directly to the glass by either manual or automated applications. Once workers are accustomed to the new process, their production should become significantly more streamlined and efficient.
Joe Erb is national account manager for Quanex Corp.
joe.erb@quanex.com
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