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If you've had the opportunity to build a new home or provide your existing
home with replacement windows you will have had the option of using either
plain old ordinary glass in them or using Low-E glass in insulating
units.  The Low-E coatings used on this glass is applied in a couple
different ways, although the most common uses a process known as "Magnetron
Sputtered Vapor Deposition", and is the same one used to apply that gold
coating to the visors of space helmets.  The only reason I'm bringing this
up is that we've been down this path a time or two before, and the last
time it was travelled I researched the source of those space helmet visors
and learned that our government spends about 4 grand to get those visors
coated.  The MSVD process involves placing the item to be coated into a
vacuum chamber, evacuating all the air (except for a few molecules) and
then bombarding a pure gold target with an electron beam to knock loose
gold atoms which then migrate to the object being coated.  Think of it as a
high-tech version of powder coating.  Because the pure gold coating that
this process provides is only a few atoms thick and the gold is so very
soft and subject to scratching, another target is used to place a different
metallic coating over the gold that is harder but still transparent.

With all that being said, the problem with getting our canopies coated with
a similar multi-layer coating is that there doesn't appear to be anyone out
there in the commercial sector with an MSVD vacuum chamber large enough to
fit the canopy.  The companies that make the MSVD chambers for the glass
industry are capable of coating glass sheets that are 8' wide and 12' long,
but they can only hold a perfectly flat sheet with a max thickness of
3/8".  That doesn't help us at all with our canopies, however, as they are
already canopy shaped and won't fit into this type of equipment.

What could be done, though, is to have the sheets of acrylic that would be
used to form our canopies (and windows) coated with a similar Low-E coating
prior thermo-forming.  I would be pleased to make contact with one of the
coaters that I do business with and arrange for them to coat some sheets of
acrylic which could subsequently be cut and formed into our canopies... the
catch is that the usual spray-on coating that is used to protect the
canopies during assembly could no longer be used... we'd have to be very
careful during the building of our airplanes to insure that we don't damage
the MSVD coating during the build process.  These MSVD coatings, BTW, are
still considered "soft", and are recommended primarily for use in isulating
units with the coated surface facing the inside of the unit, away from the
area that gets cleaned by our mates and other people that actually "do
windows".  That, alone, would dissuade me from wanting to travel down this
path.  Additionally, the cost of getting a coating like this done that
would be robust enough to contend with daily use would probably exceed that
$660 number that ACS wants for its plastic film.  Still, it is a possibility.

    <Marv>

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LML website:   http://www.olsusa.com/Users/Mkaye/maillist.html
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Please send your photos and drawings to marvkaye@olsusa.com.
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