Flabeg
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| Flabeg Automotive Holding GmbH
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| legal form | GmbH |
| founding | 2015 |
| Seat | Nuremberg , Germany |
| management | Andreas Katzer, Gerhard Wilwerding and David Littau |
| Branch | Glass processing |
| Website | www.flabeg.com |
Flabeg is a glass processing company. The main activity is bending and coating of glass.
history
In 1882 the Further Glashütte was re-established by the brothers Alois and Eduard Kupfer and their brother-in-law Sigmund Glaser with three mirror glass furnaces. In 1905 the "Spiegelglasfabriken Bechmann-Kupfer AG" came into being through the merger of the Spiegelglashütte Furth im Wald and the Bechmann company with its administrative headquarters in Fürth / Bavaria. The name "Bayrische Spiegelglasfabriken" was changed in 1938 to "Spiegelglas Union AG" based in Fürth / Bavaria. The first continuously working mirror conveyor belt in Europe was put into operation in 1953. In 1954 the name was changed to "Unionglas AG" with the new main shareholder Delog ( German Libbey Owens Society for mechanical glass production ). Since the complete takeover in 1967, Unionglas has operated as a GmbH.
Delog in Gelsenkirchen and Detag in Fürth / Bavaria merged in 1970 to form Flachglas AG , based in Gelsenkirchen. In 1971 the Schulze company in Herford was bought up. The three most important companies in the flat glass processing industry in the Federal Republic of Germany (Unionglas GmbH (Furth im Wald), Westdeutsche Spiegelfabriken GmbH (Sende) and Flabeg GmbH (Fürth)) merged and renamed "Spiegelunion Flabeg GmbH". The company became a subsidiary of "Flachglas AG". In 1978 the company was renamed Flabeg GmbH.
Pilkington took over Flachglas AG in 1980; thus Flabeg also became a member of the Pilkington Group. Flabeg broke away from the Pilkington Group in 2000 through a management buyout and became an independent Flabeg GmbH & Co. KG. In 2008 the corporate form was changed to Flabeg GmbH. In 2009, Flabeg Solar US Corporation opened a plant in Pittsburgh (USA) for the production of solar mirrors for all CSP applications (solar towers, solar Stirling, parabolic troughs), and capacities for solar mirrors in Europe were also expanded. In 2010 Flabeg expanded its competencies in terms of engineering services for parabolic troughs.
In 2009/2010, the group of companies with around 1,800 employees worldwide achieved sales of 170 million euros, 90% of which were abroad. The company was world market leader with some products.
In 2013, FLABEG repositioned itself and from now on focused on mirrors and glasses in the automotive sector. The companies will be merged in 2015 under the "FLABEG Automotive Holding".
In May 2020, the company had to file for bankruptcy as a result of the crisis in the automotive industry.
activities
Coating
The development of thin-film technologies is one of the main focuses of Flabeg research. In terms of process technology, the company works with physical vapor deposition (PVD). This describes a group of coating processes in a high vacuum for the production of thin layers in the nanometer range . Flabeg uses the following PVD processes:
- Electron beam evaporation
- Sputtering (sputter deposition, sputtering)
as well as reactive variants of these processes.
Electron beam evaporation
In this coating process, the granular coating material in the crucibles is vaporized by bombarding it with a high-energy, focused electron beam. The evaporated material spreads in a club-shaped manner in a steam jet and is deposited on the glass substrates located above the crucible. There the layer formation takes place through condensation. The use of rotating multi-hole crucibles, which can be equipped with different coating materials, enables the coating of multilayers in a single coating cycle. The layer structure can be controlled by the selected coating parameters and by the substrate temperature. With the precise in-situ control of the coating process, e.g. switching off the electron gun after the required transmission value has been reached, high-precision optical functional coatings such as beam splitters with different transmission and reflection values are produced: a decisive advantage when coating using electron beam evaporation. Flabeg operates electron beam evaporation in batch mode. In addition to metals and oxides in a reactive atmosphere, fluorides and sulfides can also be vaporized.
Magnetron sputtering
The principle of magnetron sputtering is based on a continuous argon gas discharge, the plasma. The plasma is ignited at negative pressure by a high voltage of up to 1000 V. The target material attached to the magnetron is atomized by the bombardment with argon ions and is deposited as a thin, even and compact layer on the glass surface. In the case of non-reactive sputtering processes, such as, for example, of metal layers, the sputtered cathode material is deposited directly on the glass surface, while in the reactive sputtering of oxides or nitrides it reacts with reactive gases before being deposited on the glass surface.
Double magnetrons
Reactive and non-reactive sputtering processes are applied in a single coating process. By using double magnetrons, highly insulating and highly resistant silicon oxide layers can be produced as the base material for optical functional layers such as anti-reflective systems. The anti-reflective coating achieved is> 99%. Typical applications for anti-reflective glass in the automotive sector are cover glasses for dashboards and instrument clusters that provide a reflection-free view of car instruments, such as speedometers and the like. similar (Flabeg RControl®). Other applications are covers for screens, displays and the like. Ä., As well as so-called. Museum glass (Flabeg ARTControl®), anti-reflective glass for high-quality works of art. For the latter application, UV protection is applied as an additional functional layer.
Hot and cold processes in coating technology
The Flabeg sputtering system is equally suitable for hot and cold processes, i.e. H. Coating processes in which the glass is heated to a temperature of up to 300 C, as well as coating processes for unheated glass. Flabeg sputters all relevant materials:
- Metallic coatings
- Highly transparent oxide layers
- Nitridic layers
- Mixed layers of defined proportions of oxygen and nitrogen
- Transparent conductive indium tin oxide coatings
Maximum glass dimensions of 2.70 m × 1.80 m can be coated.
To bend
In general, there are two bending methods available for glass processing. In press bending, the glass is heated to a temperature of approx. 620 ° C in a rotary furnace before it is shaped with a press die. When bending, the glass is brought to temperatures of around 650 ° C in a continuous furnace. The bending of the glass into the corresponding shape takes place solely through the force of gravity of the glass. With the precision bending of exterior mirror glasses of cars and commercial vehicles, the so-called. "Blind spots" are eliminated: a decisive contribution to road safety.
Precision bending is also an important function and quality parameter when using solar mirrors. Flabeg started its first activities in this area as early as the 1970s. The first solar thermal power plants ( SEGS I-IX), which were built in the Mojave Desert in California in the 1980s, are equipped with these mirrors.
Parabolic trough power plants
The collectors consist of curved mirrors with a parabolic cross-section. They track the sun uniaxially from east to west. In the focal line of the mirrors there is an absorber tube on which the sunlight is focused. A heat transfer fluid circulates in this pipe as the working medium. The sunlight is concentrated more than 80 times and heats the fluid to approx. 400 ° C. This thermal energy is conventionally converted into electricity in a downstream steam generator using a turbine and generator. In order to achieve a high degree of efficiency at the operating temperatures, the reflector must efficiently reflect the incident solar radiation with geometric precision and resistance to all emerging wind loads. Precision and optical properties of the collector are important influencing factors with regard to the performance of the solar power plant. For example, if the shape of the mirror deviates from the optimum, this leads to a loss of the concentrated radiation.
Power plant types
The company supplies solar mirrors for solar thermal power plants (both parabolic troughs and Fresnel collector systems), solar towers ( heliostats ) and solar Stirling systems.
The company is independent of a group and has eleven locations in Europe, North and South America and Asia. Flabeg organized its activities on the Flabeg Holding GmbH, Headquarters Nuremberg .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Florian Langenscheidt , Bernd Venohr (Hrsg.): Lexicon of German world market leaders. The premier class of German companies in words and pictures . German Standards Editions, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-86936-221-2 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 26 ′ 0.3 ″ N , 11 ° 3 ′ 19.6 ″ E