It’s a weird business climate today. On the one hand, anything you write from inside a for-profit business is going to be met with skepticism. On the other hand, a lot of people still buy into commercial messages without question.
When will she quit??!?? Soon. Soon. Meanwhile, here’s a laboratory test glass with a measured COE of 89 (sorry, the 90 COE lab glass that we’d tested previously has been discontinued). According to popular understanding this glass should be within the range of expansion mismatch for a COE 90 glass (plus or minus 1 COE point). Not.
I’ve been ranting for weeks now about the misunderstanding of the Coefficient of Expansion within the studio glass community. Steve from Glasgow made the brilliant if obvious point in a comment to my April 11 posting that we’ll never get rid of this use of the COE as a shorthand equation for compatibility until it’s replaced with something else.
Steve’s right. Of course. We all know – and increasingly other manufacturer’s are even admitting – that matching COEs doesn’t insure compatibility between glasses. They further admit that they are testing for the stress at the interface of different glasses, NOT the COE. They are even confirming our assertion that viscosity is equally (we say more) important in the compatibility equation.
(Incidentally, I almost got an inter-factory discussion going over on Warm Glass, when Uroboros’s Bill Ward showed up briefly. I’d love to keep talking, but I guess my chit-chatting skills need honing…)
So Steve asks - correctly – if we shouldn’t be talking about the COE, then how do we talk about relative viscosities?
In short, matching viscosities is about matching annealing points. But that’s, again, taking us off-course. You can find incompatible glasses with the same annealing points, just as you can find incompatible glasses with the same COEs. It is a combination of those two qualities that will determine compatibility. They cannot and should not be separated. The combination is complex and is tied to the unique composition of the base Test Glass.
What is simple is that over 25 years ago, Bullseye developed a glass to use as a standard in testing its range of compatible glasses. It’s our base clear glass. It has a COE of approximately 91* and a measured annealing point of 990F. It will not match all other glasses with COEs in that range, nor will it match all other glasses with similar annealing points. To know whether a glass is “Bullseye Compatible”, you can either buy it from the factory where it’s been tested to our standards, or you can test it against our standard clear glass.
Once more. It is what it is. It says what it means. It’s not 90. It’s not anti-social. It’s merely accurate. Is this a disturbing concept?
Other factories can test against this standard too. In fact, when another Portland glass factory, Uroboros Glass, entered the fusing market, their owner stated that they’d tested their glass against our standard clear glass and that theirs fit ours. So why didn’t they just market it as “tested against Bullseye”? Guess.
Instead they chose to call it “COE 90.0” glass. Clearly, that designation let them come to the party without a hostess gift. Did that bother us? Of course, but not everyone is born with the finer social graces. And UB certainly wasn’t the first to try to genericize a brand. I’m not objecting to generics. I’m objecting to messing up technical information while creating them.
Today we have “System 96” which is a trademark registered to Spectrum Glass Company - who also happens to own the lion’s share of this product range. They are certainly aware that dilatometric tests do not yield consistent readings of 96 on samples of their glass, nor on samples of glasses said to match their glass.
Then we have the commonly used generic labeling of “COE 90” by dealers, manufacturers (not us!) and users that includes the historic standard (Bullseye’s 1101F clear glass), plus a lot of other stuff that may or may not have been tested against that standard.
And - to further confuse the scene - we have distributors who are marketing certain glasses as COE 90 when that claim contradicts the COE published by the manufacturer. And we have websites titled COE90 that - because they sell our glass – are mistakenly assumed to be owned by Bullseye.
And people think that WE are complicating this issue by arguing against the use of COE as a measure of compatibility?!
If not 90 and 96, then what?
“Bullseye-compatible” and “Spectrum-compatible”. Is that so difficult?
Any manufacturer who wants to claim compatibility with those brands should just say what they are doing: that they are testing their glass against Bullseye’s standard or testing it against Spectrum’s standard. Shorthand? How about TABS and TASS?
And if you think that’s too “commercial”, then just keep slaughtering glass science.
- Lani
* Because the measurement of the COE or Linear Expansion Coefficient is not precise, even in the best laboratories, we hesitate to claim better than an approximate measure for this quality.
PS. This is for Ed’s fans who didn’t want to remember him in a bag: Ed in a Tin. He seems to be enjoying the windowsill, but that CHINTZ would make him just….how do I say this….roll over in his….?
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:10 pm
Succinct, as always, Lani.
Has anyone thought of going the ANSI route and setting up a standard that way? Bullseye Compatible would get one ANSI number, Spectrum another. The standard would be defined as tight as you guys want… COE91 at a defined temperature, anneal point of 990, viscosity of something-or-other pascal-seconds at a define temperature, etc etc. I know it’s a pain in the posterior to do…but at least it gets it out of the arena of finger pointing.
Soon (hah!) folks would talk about ANSI-nnnn and ANSI-iiii glass instead of that, um, “other” thing they call it.
Gary
PS So, ARE we going to see Ed (may he RIP) glass?
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Gary, For sure - you’ll see Eddie Glass before you see an ANSI number. But that’s not to say we’re not taking your suggestion seriously. It’s just that we’re slightly more experienced at making bone-ash opals than at setting up national standards. - Cheers, Lani
May 2nd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Lani,
I find myself completely agreeing with the idea of a more correct way of describing the compatibility of glass for the kiln forming market. My engineering background forces me to prefer the more accurate use of technical terms (to the annoyance of friends and family).
Your suggested “Bullseye-Compatible” and “Spectrum-Compatible” labels make perfect sense for Bullseye and Spectrum product sets. I like them.
I do, however, find myself feeling a little sorry for the nice folks at Uroboros. They have long made a stunning assortment of tiffany reproduction stained glass. Later they expanded their line to offer glass that could be fused together with Bullseye-Compatible glass, and finally added more fusible glass to extend the machine-made fusible glass offered by Spectrum.
I will GUESS that Uroboros has a higher dollar volume of the ‘can be fused with Spectrum’ glass primarily due to frit and stringer production, as Spectrum does not make these products for the System 96 line. It is interesting, however, that Uroboros still offers more ‘can be fused with Bullseye’ colors than ‘can be fused with Spectrum’ colors.
The thing is, now Uroboros may be in a situation of sorts. They make products that have the ‘System 96’ label. Would Spectrum go ballistic if Uroboros labeled their other product line of fusible glass as ‘Bullseye-Compatible’ or as the MUCH easier to type ‘TABS’? I’m going go out on a limb here and guess Spectrum very well might, based on previous bad-blood.
However, if Uroboros did step up to the plate and begin compatibility testing in the Bullseye manner, and then label these products as ‘TABS’ rather than COE 90, I think others might well follow.
Changes like this can be hard. We still ‘Dial’ our push button phones and measure engine output in ‘Horse Power’. These terms make no logical sense, but we seem stuck with them (although horse power IS a measurable standard, and more is better). Thankfully our speedometers don’t give speed in ‘furlongs per fortnight’, at least. But once a bad ‘marketing’ habit is formed in the market place, it is a real effort to break.
Perhaps a personal visit to Uroboros with cookies in hand might smooth things a bit?
Marc…
p.s. My condolences on the loss of Ed.
May 2nd, 2007 at 9:24 pm
No argument with the move to standards although it can be a dangerous move from a branding perspective. Might be some interesting licensing or “certified Bullseye compatible” revenue possibilities, though.
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:45 am
Oooo…. I like what Ms. Cynthia just said about “licensing”. Recurring Revenue… the Holy Grail. Or Holly Grail, if you are in a Christmas mood. The only trouble with that (like there is only ONE, eh?) is that it sort of requires the licensee to “admit” that Bullseye is the leader in the field. Then again, Uroboros already talks about Bullseye on their site (http://www.uroboros.com/index.php?page=faq#f2)
But that “admit leadership” is a bit of a fuzzy too. For you old computer geeks (hi Cynthia! (not that I’m saying you’re old!)) the “Centronics Standard” for parallel port printers hung in there for eons after Centronics was laying on its back with its little feet sticking up in the air. How about the “Hayes Standard” for modems?
I guess what I’m saying is “Bullseye came up with the benchmark standard, so they get to name it”. It doesn’t require the licensee to say that the Bullseye glass is BETTER, just that Bullseye was first in line with this particular mix and they get to name it.
May 3rd, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Marc,
Regardless of your speculations about the relationship between any of the glass factories, why should users pay the price of flawed science in order to accommodate the politics of business?
Whether or not any of us are “nice folks” or the targets of other companies who may “go ballistic” isn’t at issue here. The bottom line is the integrity of the information – both technical and historical – that we disseminate.
(But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy reading your interpretation of the commercial dynamic.
Cynthia,
We’ve always shied away from revenue generated by certification, but if the alternative is this constant (unpaid) battle to defend a few technical terms against the endless assault of marketing, well….
Gary,
You can take over this part of the blog from now on. Your last paragraph nailed it. Now can you reduce it to a bumper sticker?
- Lani
May 3rd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Bullseye: One Hot Standard
BE History: Fuse to a Standard!
BE Compatible: It’s for Everyone!
It was first…It’s for everyone…Bullseye Standard
Bullseye Standard…Fuse With The First!
(Uh-Oh… gotta run into the house…Mabel (the cat) just spritched where she shouldn’t have. Bad Cat!!!!)
GcB
May 4th, 2007 at 7:52 am
spritched??
May 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
As in, “She backed up the wall and she…” Use you imagination. Or not.
GcB
(Wooo-Hoo!! Star Trek Convention this weekend!!)