Laminated glass - any difference, aside from brand?

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Grumbler in Training
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Sep 13, 2010
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Is there any difference between Schott Amiran 4mm laminated glass and Glastrosch Luxar 4mm laminated glass? Both products report to be antireflective, UV filtering, and have no color shift. Various qualities are available in either brand like annealed/tempered/bulletproof, but if compairing both brands with identical product specifications is there any noticable difference? Of course each company claims their technology is better, producing a superior product, but they cannot point to specifics.

Does anyone have practical application or handling experience to offer me?

Thanks ~ Kim
 
Welcome, Kim.

The products you mentioned are not generally found in our realm, since most Grumblers are consumer-retail or commercial project framers. Museum Glass and Museum Optium Acrylic are at the top of our range of glazing products.

Laminated, optically coated, UV-filtering glass is generally used in framing items that are either priceless or very highly valued, such as found in museums and in governments.

To tap a base of knowledge about these products, I suggest you contact the curators and conservators who specify them and work with them. You might also get some good answers from suppliers serving those users.
 
Kim,

We sell a good deal of frames with Laminated Luxar glass, and as I understand it we used to sell a lot of Laminated Amiran but mostly have only been quoting for customers lately. I have only been at Bark for a year next week and I'm not positive why we made the switch.

In my opinion, the clarity of the two products are identical. They are both high quality low iron substrates. The anti-reflective coatings are a different color and are applied differently, however.

Amiran uses a dip-coating process, I am not too familiar with it but the result is a yellow-green reflective color. Luxar uses magnetron sputtering, similar to the process to convert Optium from Plaskolite Optix (formerly Cyro-Evonik's Acrylite FF and FF-OP3 were the substrates for Optium and Optium Museum, respectively; they have recently switched). The reflected color is blue with a hint of purple. To me the reflection seems more evenly colored in the Luxar and I also like the blue tone. It is really up to the application, I suppose, for example a blue versus green reflection could work for different pieces of artwork.

We use 3mm, 4mm Laminated and 6mm Laminated Luxar direct from Future Optics, the museum application spin-off business of McGrory Glass. McGrory is the sole North American Distributor of Luxar and the GlasTrosch line.

One thing is Amiran doesn't offer a 6mm Laminated product because they do not make Amiran in 3mm thickness (3mm + laminate + 3mm).

I hope this helps!

Cheers,

Vincent Ustach
Bark Frameworks
 
In our experience here, Schott is very difficult to work with, whereas Glastrosch isn't bad.

We cannot really tell the difference between the two, and many clients cannot either, but have their own preferences -usually based on institutional tradition- anyway.

If you just don't give clients an option, it'll make your life easier, but of course supply them with whatever, if they come in asking for one or the other by name.
 
We have only used Schott here. I think it is a cost factor and Schott have a distributor in Australia. The major galleries here all use Schott as far as I know.

They both make the Tru Vu Museum glass look very cheap. Schott is three times the price. But it is very nice glass - if you have something extra special. very heavy too!
 
Thank you so much for your collective input. This was exactly what I needed. I quoted my client for Amiran but they were only familiar with Luxar so thought I was replacing their glass with an inferior product. I found myself without enough product knowledge to instill confidence. Most conservators that I work with defer to me for frame product knowledge, including the conservator I am collaborating with on this project. Turns out that Luxor is less expensive for me to acquire, and though I haven't used it before I feel confident ordering it with your endorsements. I am grateful for the broad range of experience and knowledge that is represented on this forum. ~Kim
 
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