Specialized
Curves, cases, cleanrooms and sets
Most switchable glass goes into a door, a window, a partition or a guard. Everything below is what the plant gets asked for the rest of the time, and each one has already been made.
Shapes are not the difficult part: curves, holes, notches and cut-outs are fabricated to the drawing, not chosen from a list of sizes. A project usually turns specialised at the edge condition, the wiring route or the duty cycle.
Curved glass
The curve is in the glass and the switchable layer follows it. Radiused walls, columns and cylindrical enclosures, with the radius confirmed before anything is quoted.
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Rear-projection surfaces
A switched panel is a 94–95% haze diffusing surface, the same thing a projection screen is. In service in a Toronto office, projecting in daylight with moderate ambient light.
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Display cases
A case at the Royal Ontario Museum that stays opaque until a visitor presses a button. Thousands of switches a week, and cycle life stops being a footnote and becomes a specification.
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Cleanroom viewing panels
Supervision from outside and confidential work screened from it, on a working pharmaceutical plant floor where there is nothing to launder and nothing to gather dust.
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Studios and sets
The first US NHK World-Japan studio, and the chief medical officer’s office on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Switched on camera, not for privacy.
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Transit and rail
Stations, control rooms and vehicle interiors. The film has been tested at Intertek against NFPA 130, the standard this sector asks in.
Read moreGot one in front of you? Send the drawing and the constraint: shape, wiring route, exposure, duty cycle. What comes back is a quotation: panel schedule, transformer, lead time. No square-foot figure, because there is not an honest one. Earlier than that, twenty minutes with a project specialist is the place to start.
What actually makes a project unusual
Rarely the shape. Almost always one of these four, and all four get settled on the shop drawing. None of them should be discovered on site.
- The edge: how the busbar is anchored and where the wiring leaves a panel that is not a rectangle
- Movement: a leaf, a track or a case lid means power has to reach something that changes position
- Exposure: wet, exterior or cold. The laminated products are published for -10 to 60 °C and film for -20 to 60 °C
- Duty cycle: a display case switched hundreds of times a day is a different specification from a boardroom switched twice
Cycle life is the one people forget. PDLC film is rated for over 800,000 switching cycles, PNLC and DLC for over 600,000. Comfortable for a partition. Worth checking against the number for an exhibit that switches on every visitor. Every published figure is in the technical reference.
The unusual ones, delivered
M/Y Small World
77 sq. ft. of custom-cut PDLC film across eight shaped windows with radiused corners.
Embraer at NBAA
Built and commissioned in Ontario, crated, shipped, and reconnected in Las Vegas.
Stitched
Three structures lit from behind, where 94–95% haze stops being a spec and becomes the set.
If it is not on this list
It has probably still been asked for. Send the drawing and the constraint: the shape, where the wiring can go, what the panel is exposed to, how often it switches. The answer comes from the people who would have to make it. Pompano Beach, Florida; 1-866-PRIWATT (1-866-774-9288).