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IGMA: Report from Vancouver Summer Conference

The Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance held its Summer Conference on July 31 through August 2 in Vancouver. The event attracted over 100 insulating glass fabricators for three days of informative presentations and discussion.

It was a great gathering of our membership – thanks to all the delegates, sponsors and IGMA staff who made it all happen. And thanks to the Facade Tectonics Institute who gave the event some extra educational punch with a fantastic full-day seminar the day before we started. Here are some brief highlights from the event.

Helen Sanders of Technoform and David Cooper of Guardian co-chaired a meeting of the Emerging Technologies and Innovation Committee. IGMA technical consultant, Bill Lingnell, led off with a report from the thermal stress standard task group. Lingnell discussed the group’s efforts to create a standard for the amount of stress insulating glass should be able to take from changes in temperature. With the modelling work mostly done, they are turning to writing a standard, which the group hopes will be accepted by ASTM in the future. Another goal is to develop a software tool telling fabricators how much thermal variation their designs will tolerate.

Cooper told the committee that a guideline document for vacuum insulating glass is now available on the IGMA website and the task group has moved to working on a standard.

John Kent of AMS reported from the ASTM E2190 field correlation study task group, which is seeking to establish an accelerated pressure/temperature/UV stress test that can provide a provisional E2190 certification for fabricators until full testing can be done. The work to evaluate the test on solid seals is done, but more work may be needed to show it agrees sufficiently with the results of a full E2190 test. In the next round of research, the group wants to look at semi-rigid sealing technologies, but getting samples and access to a testing apparatus remains a challenge. Anyone out there able to help, hands up, please!

The life cycle assessment task group reported that California has introduced a bill called the Buy Clean Act that will require companies to report the contribution to climate change that their product represents. I have published an article explaining that creation of an industry-wide Environmental Product Declaration for flat glass may be the only way for the industry to ensure a fair standard for environmental authorities to refer to.

Kent gave the Certification Committee an update from the Safety Glazing Certification Council. He reported that ANSI and CGSB standards are now harmonized, bringing over 2,800 tempered and laminated products into registration.

Kent also reported that the Insulating Glass Certification Council is working on several changes, with 810 insulating glass products now certified and numbers rising slowly. Efforts to establish certification for individual internal components, enabling fabricators to construct a certified unit rather than test each configuration, are making progress. The IGCC has also introduced an “inactive product” category that allows fabricators to let the certification for rarely produced products to lapse without being removed from the record and to be reactivated in the event the manufacturer gets an order for that product.

I reported on efforts to have IGMAC certification accredited by ANSI. The application was well-received and we anticipate the accreditation will go forward with few changes to the existing program.

Lots more went on but that’s all we have room for here. Our Winter Conference takes place Feb. 4 through 7 in Austin, Texas.