In most industrialized countries, windows touch people's lives every day. Where ever people work and live there are windows. Windows allow the occupants of a building to view the outside world, while allowing sun light to enter the interior of the building. Sunlight is a natural antidepressant and helps the human body produce vitamin D. Thus, a certain amount of sunshine is essential to mental and physical well-being.
In extreme climates, significant energy may be lost through windows during the winter when a building is being heated, and/or during the summer when a building is being cooled. With the high cost of energy, efforts have been made to provide homes and other buildings with insulation that will more efficiently prevent the transfer of heat between the inside and the outside of a building. Multiple-pane insulating glass units (“IGUs”) have been developed as an effective way to reduce the amount of heat transfer through windows.
There are basically two types of multiple-pane IGUs in widespread commercial production. These are often referred to as double glazing and triple glazing. Double glazed insulating glass units are the most common. They have a space sealed between two panes. This space provides thermal insulation. The insulating effect can be enhanced by filling the space with an insulative gas mix, e.g., a mix of air and argon or krypton. Alternatively, the space can be evacuated, so as to provide a vacuum IG unit. Compared with a single pane glazing, double glazed IGUs can reduce the heat loss through a window by nearly half. Triple-glazed IGUs (or “triple glazing”) can provide even more insulating effect, but are currently less common. They have three panes and two thermal insulation spaces.
Because of the dramatic energy savings that can be achieved with multiple-pane IGUs, building codes in many areas have been revised to require their use. The relative energy performance of these units is an important factor to consider when consumers purchase windows.
The front and rear surfaces of an IGU may be damaged (e.g., scratched) or soiled during storage, handling, transportation to a building site, and/or during the building process (e.g., during installation of the IGU, or during various finishing operations, such as painting, brick washing, etc.). It is therefore desirable to provide removable masking over one or both of the front and rear surfaces of an IGU. Once an IGU has been mounted in its final position and all finishing of the surrounding structures has been completed, the masking can be removed from the IGU to reveal the pristine underlying pane surface.
In the past, various methods and machines have been developed for masking glass panes. Some of these methods and machines have been limited in terms of their production speed, their ability to support made-to-order production, the extent to which they are automated, their ability to securely yet removably place masking film on glass without wrinkles, folds, and/or air bubbles, the manner in which they integrate with upstream or downstream IGU manufacturing equipment, and/or their reliability in terms of not having the machine or certain parts wear prematurely.
It would be desirable to provide masking machines and methods that solve one or more problems attendant in state-of-the-art masking application technology, or that otherwise offer improvements over state-of-the-art masking machines and methods.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds