What is the difference between tempered and laminated glass?

What is Tempered Glass?

Tempered glass is a popular glass type used for many applications, especially windows and doors, due to its durability, safety, and thermal properties. It's produced by the heating of annealed glass with a special furnace to a temperature of 700c. Once the glass is heated, it's quickly removed for rapid cool down. The combination of heat and quenching on the glass allows it to harden faster than the core. 

What is Laminated glass?

Laminated glass is created with two pieces of tempered or regular glass sandwiched between a plastic resin or polyvinyl butyral (PVB). Unlike tempered glass, it won't shatter into pieces when breakage occurs. That's because the broken glass will stick onto the plastic instead of falling onto the floor. The fractured glass stays inside the frame rather than shattering into jagged pieces. 

This glass type offers a few benefits such as: 

• It aids in the screening or protection of UV radiation.

• Soundproof your windows so that loud noises don't enter your home.

• The glass can be made transparent or tinted.

Tempered or safety glass, typically used as the side and read windows in cars, is made, cut to the shape and size needs, then it is heated, fairly quickly, to a high temperature. As it cools, this creates stress in the class. If it is hit hard, in breaks into thousands of pieces of roundish glass. It is NEVER used in windshields, as the slightest thing hitting the glass, like a pebble, will cause it to shatter into thousands of pieces. making it difficult if not impossible to see through.

Laminated safety glass consists of two layers of glass, plus a sheet of tough and a transparent sheet of plastic bonded to the top of one piece glass, and the bottom of the other.

When it is hit, it cracks, but the plastic layer holds the pieces together. This type of glass is NOT tempered.

Hope this helps.