Glass fabricators have a number of new products to look forward to this year, according to a panel of five company representatives who discussed their new products at the New Product Showcase during Glass Week.

Jeffrey Nixon of Glass Coatings & Concepts LLC (GCC), in Monroe, Ohio, talked about his company's foray into the architectural glass coatings arena. GCC has supplied frits, enamels and more for the decorative glass industry for a number of years. It has now developed a completely new line of architectural enamels for spandrel glass. Two lines are available: a bismuth-based one and a hybrid system.

While practically jogging out the door to catch a plane, Pilkington's Chris Barry presented his company's new products on the fly, literally. "We are introducing a new gold Eclipse® glass this summer," he said. "We are working on a building with it right now and expect it will probably be released in June." Barry says the color properties are a vast improvement over other types of gold glass. Pilkington's new Optivue® anti-reflective coating is expected to be released at that time as well, he said. "Optivue removes the last four percent of reflectivity in the glass. It's bendable, temperable, and more and will be a great product," he said.

Mark Abbott of Life Sentry Corporation in Dunas, MN explained his company's new online defect detection system called Hawkeye. It inspects glass from the front and rear surfaces of monolithic glass by incorporating seven cameras to provide 100 percent coverage. "The cameras do not actually touch the glass," said Abbott, "yet you get to see the actual scratches the camera saw."

"Jerry's over in the park being made into a character," said David Vermeulen of Technical Glass Product's absent leader. "He sent me to talk with you about some new fire-rated products." Vermeulen discussed the new fire-rated glasses and frames. "Schools in Oregon are being retrofitted with these new products in place of wired glass," he said.

Finishing out the session was Mark Rupert, who sang the praises of Starphire® ultraclear glass and talked about the new Solarban 60 Starphire. "This glass has a lot of desirable properties," Rupert said. "It even has 'sustainable' characteristics of energy efficiency and daylighting that are so important."

A scheduled presentation of heat-treatable scratch-resistant products by Guardian did not take place.