Glass Substrates - Viracon - Single Source Architectural Glass
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Glass substrates are the individual plies of glass used to fabricate glass units and may also be referred to as float glass, raw glass or glass lites. Each substrate is available in a variety of thicknesses and can have Viracon's reflective or Low-E coatings and digital or silk-screen print, applied.

  • Clear is the most commonly specified glass substrate and has a slight green tint. In applications where designers wish to reduce the green tint, low iron glass is often specified in place of clear glass.
  • Low iron is a type of float glass manufactured with less iron than standard clear glass. With this reduction in iron content, the green hue is reduced.
  • Tinted glass is available in an assortment of colors and light transmission levels. In addition to providing a specific appearance, tinted glass has the added benefit of improving performance.
  • Viracon also offers a few specialty glass substrates developed for limited use in specific applications. Due to their unique characteristics, specialty glass substrates cannot be combined with Viracon's reflective or Low-E coatings.

Appearance & Performance

The specific glass substrate needed for a given project is typically dictated by a required solar performance or a desired appearance. Viracon’s Product Search simplifies the process of selecting specific glass coating and color combinations.

Glass Substrate Thickness

All glass substrates are available 1/4″ (6mm) thick. Clear and each of the low iron substrates are also available in thicknesses of 3/16″ (5mm), 5/16″ (8mm) and 3/8″ (10mm). For tinted substrates, specialty substrates or other thicknesses of clear or low iron glass substrates, please check with Viracon for availability.

Viracon Nomenclature

Viracon utilizes an alphanumeric code for each coated glass product. The code designates the coating as well as the glass substrate the coating is applied to. This nomenclature is meant to aid in specifying our fabricated glass products however is not enough on its own to clearly identify the full glass unit. In a specification, it is important to include the Viracon nomenclature along with an outline including each component of the glass unit.

The first portion of the code represents the coating family. Within each family, the coatings available have varying degrees of light transmittance. In our nomenclature, this is represented by the number following the dash.

Each glass substrate which can have a Viracon coating applied is also given a numerical code.

Viracon coating applied is also given a numerical code

Glass Substrates table

In a specification, the glass substrate number should be placed after the coating family and before the dash in our nomenclature. In this example, VE-85 is the coating and VE1-85 is the VE-85 coating applied to clear glass.

Glass Substrate Location

In units with multiple glass plies, it is important to specify the specific glass substrate for each ply. When a tinted glass substrate is selected typically only one ply of the fabricated glass unit is tinted while the other ply remains clear. The tinted ply should be placed to the exterior to reduce solar heat gain.

One exception is laminated glass. Since there is no airspace to keep the heat absorbed by the tinted exterior ply from re-radiating into the building, the solar heat gain can be improved by moving the tinted ply to the inboard. This improvement happens when the clear coated outboard with high solar reflectance is placed in front of the tinted glass.

Purevision is a trademark of AGC.
CrystalBlue, CrystalGray, and UltraClear are trademarks of Guardian Industries.
Optiwhite is a trademark of Pilkington.
Azuria, Solarblue, Pacifica, Starphire, Optigray and Optiblue are registered trademarks owned by Vitro.

Viracon cannot guarantee the future availability of component parts manufactured or supplied by others that are incorporated into Viracon products.