Automotive Glass Decorating Products; History, Current, and Future Developments and Requirements

Nick Westra, Johnson Matthey Colour Technologies

The use of glass decorating products in the automotive industry, started approximately 40 years ago with the introduction of silver pastes for screen-printing.

In the seventies of the last century, when silver metal based screen printing pastes were widely used to defog and/or defrost back lites, the decoration of automotive glass leaped forward when car manufacturers started to introduce the technique of gluing glass into the car bodies. This technique required protection of the polyurethane glue. Glass enamels were the ideal solution, and a new application for a portfolio of long time existing products was a fact.

This paper highlights the main events in the product evolution of the various product groups used to decorate all types of automotive glass.

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