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Industrial Specialty Materials and Glasses
Ultrapure dental glass powders
Vibrantz’s ultrapure glass fillers for composites have been developed to fulfill the highest requirements in fineness and homogeneity for use in specially formulated restorative dental materials and compomers. Our inert dental glass powders are of the highest purity and can be ground into ultra-fine particle sizes for optimum resin loading, reducing shrinkage.
Designed to deliver improved surface hardness, a highly aesthetic appearance, and good wear resistance, Vibrantz dental glass powders offer high mechanical and mechanical strength that allow fillings to be polished like a tooth. Additional properties of our glasses include adequate roentgen opacity for detection of the filling from other dental tissue in standard X-ray photographs.
Available in refraction indices of the most common dental resins, (typically from 1.50 – 6), we also offer formulations with custom refractive indices and intermediate milling grades. Dental glasses are available with or without fluoride.
Stove tile glazes
Our stove glazes provide a durable layer and a wide range of styles, colors and effects. Constant innovation efforts with our customers have resulted in new colors of special combinations as well as mixtures of classical and modern designs.
To enhance our customers’ own stove tile glazes, Vibrantz provides lead-containing and lead-free frits that offer a range of glossy and transparent to semi-matte and complete matte finishes. These frits are tailored for optimal design aesthetics and performance based on the stove tile body and firing conditions.
Our corrective frits are available in lead-based and lead-free versions and can be used to repair hair cracks and to correct silk-matte effect glazes.
Specialty frits for vitreous grinding wheels
Our specialty glass frits are used to create vitrified bonds that help embed and bind abrasive grains together in traditional grinding wheels. Our glass frits enable a proper bond designed to impart hardness, strength and optimal ability for efficient cutting.
Grinding wheels made with vitrified bonds are very rigid, strong and porous. They remove stock material at high rates and grind to precise requirements. Vitrified bonds using glass-ceramic frits will enable new sharp abrasive grains to be exposed as they wear and are expelled during the grinding process. Vibrantz frits can be used in grinding wheels for wet or dry precision grinding applications on the hardest materials.
Our glass frits can be used alone or in combination with clay, kaolin, quartz, feldspar, nepheline syenite or wollastonite.
Specialty glazes for technical ceramics
Vibrantz specialty glazes are designed to fill the inherent rough surface on technical ceramics that results from the particle size of the starting material and the crystalline phase that happens from calcining. Our glazes can improve the surface quality properties of the entire technical ceramic component by creating a smoother surface and making it easy to remove unwanted residue.
Ceramic glazes are almost exclusively based on aluminosilicate glass systems manufactured from the main glass-forming oxide [silica (SiO2)] that is modified by the addition of a range of other oxides in order to engineer specific thermal, chemical and physical properties.
We offer a complete glaze product range that includes colored glazes, inorganic pigments for coloring glazes, decorating colors such as underglaze colors and screen-printing colors. We also provide organic auxiliary agents such as fluidizers, glues, anti-settling agents, preservatives and screen-printing vehicles.
Specialty glass frits for superabrasive grinding wheels
Our specialty glass frits are used to create vitrified bonds needed to embed and bind abrasive grains together in superabrasive grinding wheels. Our glass frits impart excellent wetting behavior along with free-cutting behavior when precision grinding ferrous materials such as hardened steel or nickel-based alloys.
Superabrasive grinding wheels made with vitrified bonds are specifically designed to provide extremely strong adhesion to the cubic boron nitride grain through a strong ceramic bond, enabling G-ratio (volume ratio of stock removed to wheel wear) values of 10,000 or more. This ceramic bond strength can be varied by controlling the temperature and blending our specialty glass frits which allows our customers to tailor the ceramic to the superabrasive conditions and needs.
Additional property modification can be achieved by using a ceramic-coated grain offered by Superabrasives.
Specialty frits and pigments for sanitaryware
Vibrantz produces a full palette of specialty frits and pigments formulated for use in high-temperature and long firing cycles that meet the demanding requirements of sanitaryware manufacturers. Our industrial ceramic pigments are designed to color all types of special glazes and bodies used for sanitaryware. Our InstantColor® ceramic pigment stains offer 25 shades that result in an infinite number of colors that exhibit high purity, intensity and brilliance within the complete color spectrum. Significant cost savings can be achieved as colors are easily adjusted right in the barrel.
InstantColor® stains are developed to meet the specific technical and firing requirements of the sanitaryware industry. These include being fired for several hours at a temperature higher than 1200 °C and having the color to remain true and constant. They are also capable of being fired a second time at high temperatures without any deterioration of color and surface properties. This enables sanitaryware manufacturers to perform an additional repair firing or a decorating firing process, as needed.
Specialty frits for safety cables
Our specialty frits are designed to protect safety cables in the event of a fire. Our glass-containing safety mass is added directly to silicon polymers, providing a high-performance halogen-free cable insulation alternative that offers flame-retardant properties with minimal smoke and corrosive gas emissions. In the event of a fire, glass/silicon cable insulation sinters to form a solid ceramic coating, keeping the insulation on the core of the cable intact with no short circuiting or current interruption.
Specialty glass and glazes for refractory materials
Vibrantz offers RTU glazes and specialty glass designed to impart certain characteristics required for many refractory applications. Engineered properties include protection against re-oxidation, anti-sticking, surface glossiness and resistance against thermal shock or mechanical stress.
Our refractory glass materials can be used as a flux which reduces temperatures in firing cycles, requiring less equipment and energy consumption resulting in a more environmentally responsible refractory process.
Our glazes and glass for graphite crucible applications are designed to protect against oxidation for non-ferrous metal alloy melts. Our high-temperature glazes are used for coatings of alumina oxide substrates or mullite. We also offer specialty glass and glazes that introduce boron in a high content to coating materials. Glass materials are available in different grain size distributions, which can be mixed directly in raw material recipes.