Custom Glassblowing for OEM customers

Glass Solutions manufactures custom borosilicate glass components for instrument manufactures and designers. From a single prototype to several thousands, you can be assured of care and attention to detail in every piece.

Manufacturing Innovation

Since our formation in early 2000 Glass Solutions has been determined to modernise attitudes within scientific glassblowing.  Glass Solutions has long recognized the need for greater precision within instrument glassware and we have invested wisely to develop tooling and processes that can improve product quality and reduce costs.

Prototyping

Having flexible equipment and the ability to manufacture much of our own tooling in house, helps us to rapidly deliver prototypes. These same attributes also help to quickly refine the manufacturing process to meet many product requirements. 

Manufacturing resources

Glass Solutions has the best equipped glassblowing workshop in the UK including:-

• Glassblowing lathes – 1.25” to 12” bore, more than 20 machines in total
• Diamond saws – up to 14” diameter, quantity 6
• Flat bed grinders – up to 18” diameter, quantity 8
• Annealing ovens – quantity 12
• Vacuum systems – Turbo molecular with gauging to 1.0 x 10^-9

Plus a vast quantity of other small equipment.

Areas of specialty

We have wide ranging glassblowing skills and knowledge but here are some areas where our competitors particularly struggle to match us.

• Large diameter tube resizing (up to 500mm diameter)
• Jacketed and vacuum jacketed vessels
• Special flange forms
• Cut tubes (length + 0.1mm)
• Medium volume production 1000 – 10000 items
• Complex designs with high accuracy
• Precision hot tooling (outside diameters to + 0.1mm)

Understanding our customers’ needs

Where conditions allow, we prefer to understand the use for every item that we manufacture. We believe that this is only way we can properly support and advise our clients. Examples of this might be how to make the item more robust or demonstrate a different manufacturing method that might result in lower cost production. Of course there are sometimes business needs where customers prefer not to discuss their product in any detail and we respect this completely.

We always urge our customers to contact us as early as possible in their design phase. We are happy to offer assistance in the integration of glass components into your system and this often saves time and money once production begins.

Protecting your invention

It is often very difficult to obtain patent or copyright protection for glass components. Glass Solutions can use its specialist processes to create features which other companies will find difficult and expensive to replicate.

Branding

Your company name, logos, product name etc can be applied to the glass for you using ceramic transfers which are fired into the glass. Please ask for details. 

Confidentiality

We take confidentiality very seriously and do not disclose any information or data without customer consent.