Features Fabrication Innovations
Report from the IGMA Technical Committee

Let’s take a look at the recent great work by our Technical Services Committee, chaired by Jeff Haberer of Trulite Glass and Aluminum Solutions.

The committee currently has one ballot under consideration, “Voluntary Guidelines for IGU Manufacturing Tolerances.”  The ballot closes at the end of May and the task group will review the ballot comments.  If the ballot is successful, the document will be balloted to the IGMA Technical Policy Committee for the next level of approval per IGMA’s document development procedures.

The Glazing Guidelines task group, chaired by Tracy Rogers of Keystone Certifications, is working jointly with the GANA Insulating Division to develop a technical bulletin (identified as TB-1800-XX) on IGU’s with unsupported edges.  The bulletin addresses concerns regarding the structural and durability performance of unsupported IGU edges subject to uniform load including glass stresses, practical glass deflections, sealant strength capabilities, spacer stress and deformation limits, load durations, dead load support and setting block location plus other variables that influence the unsupported edge condition for IGUs. All sections of the draft document have been written and the task group is reviewing the sections. Once this review has been completed, the document will be balloted to the Technical Services Committee and GANA’s Insulating Division.

The joint IGMA-AAMA task group, Edge Pressure on Insulating Glass Units, co-chaired by Helen Sanders of Technoform Glass Insulation and Paul Bush of Vitro Architectural, will be meeting in June to review the two proposals that have been received to develop a test fixture to measure edge seal pressure. The task group will be finalizing the remainder of the test parameters at their next conference call.

The IG Cavity Compensation task group, chaired by Aaron Ryan of Pella Corporation was initiated in mid-December, has been meeting monthly and has established a document outline and populated several sections of the document.  Cavity compensation methods that are included in the manual are capillary tubes (both on-site sealing and leave-open), breather tubes, valves (also known as the burping method), desiccant adsorption/desorption, pre-inflating/pre-deflating the unit, temperature manipulation at the manufacturing environment and bladders (for on-site sealing).  The task group is following the same template as TB-1601, Guidelines for Use of Capillary Tubes.

The IG Cavity Width task group, chaired by Dan Braun of Intertek/Architectural Testing, has finalized the TM-4400, Voluntary Guidelines for IGU Manufacturing Tolerances and has forwarded the document for balloting to the IGMA Technical Services Committee.  

The Thermal Stress task group, chaired by Jeff Haberer has been reconvened to consider adding a section on ceramic frit to TM-1500, Guidelines to Reduce Instances of Thermal Stress.

In other IGMA news, the IG Fabricator Workshop, professionally moderated by Oak Moser of Oak Hill Consulting, held the most recent workshop at the Exova facilities in Mississauga, Ont.  In addition to the workstations for frost point, glass cleaning and cutting, desiccant/desiccated matrix, gas measurement, volatile fog and sealant, two sessions were added as a result of past participant feedback: a spacer workstation and a session on how to conduct a forensic investigation (with real case studies as examples).   The committee is considering holding one face-to-face workshop annually and offering online video sessions for the remainder of the year at a reduced rate.  The task group responsible for the workshop is looking at how to best deliver the online sessions. This workshop would not be possible without the support of our volunteer workstation moderators.  Thank you to Bill Briese of GED Integrated Solutions, Mike Burk of GED Integrated Solutions, David Cooper of Guardian Industries, Randi Ernst of FDR Design, Jeff Haberer of Trulite Glass and Aluminum Solutions, Bill Lingnell our IGMA Technical Consultant, Shulin Cui of SilicaStar, Richard Warren of Tremco and Brian White of H.B. Fuller.