Apple granted rights to new process for creating high-quality curved glass - Page 2

This truly has to be joke......

 

This technique has been around for centuries.....

 

The problem is this is exactly how most companies have been making curved glass for centries.....

 

How do you think curved car wind shields are made????

 

Obviously in a different manner than this.

So you are aware of curved windshields but aren't aware of how the optical quality isn't affected by the curve? Show me a windshield that wraps around and over a car but doesn't distort.

Furthermore, what the frak does a slight curve in windshield glass have to do with 1) dramatic curves in other glass, or 2) glass used in CE?


PS: Show us this high-quality curved glass from centuries ago. In fact, show us any high-quality glass from centuries ago.

 

http://www.tempsfordstainedglass.co.uk/acatalog/Slumpys_moulds.html

By the way, I have watched windshields being made.   This is exactly how they make the individual glass laminations.  They put a piece of flat glass on the holders over a form.  The forms are on a conveyor, they run through a gas fired kiln and the glass softens and lays down on the mold..... 

 

http://www.answers.com/topic/automobile-windshield

 

What the hell is the difference????

The product must contain patentable items, or be a patentable item itself. The more complex a product, the less likely the entire product can be covered by a patent or two. But if some patents cover basic areas of which a product relies for its functionality, then no one else can produce such a product, and as a practical matter, we could say that the product itself is patented.

There are lots of examples. One I'm personally familiar with is Kodachrome film. Kodak had patents all around that. But they had very important process patents on the chemical processing portion. Patents on the film included adding metallic dyes during the film processing, rather than in the manufacturer of the film itself. It didn't prevent others from making color film, but it did prevent them from taking Kodak's very important advantages that Kodachrome offered.

So you could say that the film was patented, though it wasn't. But the way it was made was.

Same thing with automatic flash. Honeywell invented the automatic flash in the early 1950’s. it was a very simple patent by today's standards. A capacitor stores the energy for the flash. When the meter reads that the exposure is sufficient, the capacitor is shorted across a resistor, and the flash stops. Many other companies stole that patent. Honeywell sued them all, and properly won. Honeywell didn't have a patent on the entire automatic flash, just that portion of it, but we could speak of the product as being patented, because that patent was the underlayment to the entire product, even though the rest of it (the majority) wasn't patented at all.

You're talking about lamented glass. You can't be so ignorant to think that you can take the word glass and apply all types and usage to a single production process. Perhaps informing you that Apple's display glass is alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass and not the tempered glass sandwich around PVB typically used in windshields might at least lead you the right direction.

PS: Again, I ask where is your proof of high-quality curved glass from centuries ago.
Edited by SolipsismX - 12/27/12 at 10:29am

That's actually a quote from me, not AI.

It's true that curved surfaces are stronger than flat surfaces. But we have to ask ourselves if it has a practical effect here. Most glass screens break because they hit a corner when dropped. That won't be prevented at all by having a slightly curved screen. The iPhone 5 is being reported as being far less breakable than the 4 and 4S, which had the glass on both sides sitting proud of the metal edge. I've seen drop tests where they had to take extraordinary measures to break the glass, or the phone. The Samsung SIII, in the same tests, broke the first time dropped, as a comparison.

I can't see them coating a cheap device as a mouse with highly curved glass. This is a pretty expensive process, and I also doubt the extreme curvature needed by the mouse could be easily, and cheaply done. Besides, I don't think that scratches on a mouse is something people really care enough about.

They did it for marketing reasons. Curved glass looks "cool". Reflections can be better reduced using bonded screens, and more efficient anti reflection coatings, such as those Apple is using on their latest products. I see no reason for a curved screen in any practical sense. The ideal is flat.

Ugh! The last thing I would want is a curved monitor. Yes, on some very expensive, and large video screens, curved has an advantage for widely seated audiences. That way, people at the edges get a better view of the far edge. For a monitor, we could get an advantage if the monitor is large, and we're sitting close, because with LCD's, the angle of view affects the brightness. It also affects the contrast and color, even on the best screens. But otherwise, you have to sit dead center, otherwise straight lines look curved.

There are ways, and research is working on it. One way is to take an example from nature, and make the glass in very thin layers. Laminated. I've had an idea for that which should be practical, and cheap enough, in a few more years. By making a "glass" with alternating layers, just a few microns think, of glass and diamond, the problem would be solved. Evaporating thin sheets of diamond on other surfaces (vapor deposition) has been done for years. It's used for machine tool cutting bits, as one example. If several layers of this could be done, then it would be very flexible, extremely strong, and the outer surface that we would interact with, would be a very thin diamond layer, and so be very difficult to scratch.

I know they will be able to do this, as I follow the research. The question is whether some large company (Apple, who spends a lot of money researching glass, both large and small, hopefully), will finance this work. I have a small sample of this here. It's about one centimeter square, of thin microscope cover glass material, with a very thin layer of diamond. The diamond isn't perfect, but useful for some purposes. It's not very flexible, as the glass itself isn't the right type for that.

Not really.

You seem to not understand the differences between optical glass and windshields for cars. It's a pretty basic difference. No auto maker would claim their windshields are of anything close to optical quality. Perhaps you should read up on what optical quality means.

Perhaps you should actually read the article instead of just the headline. It does explain it. And there are a heck of a lot of patents around the manufacture of glass, both optical and otherwise.

 

I have given you plenty of proof....

 

How do you think the individual laminations are MADE?????????

 

As I said before, the winshields are made by placing a flat glass plate over a form.  It is Heated it up so that it flows onto the form below (Same as claimed in this so called patent ).  THEN the individual curved glass panels are layered with a plastic film in between a put in an additional press to form a safety glass lamination.  

 

The LAMINATION is formed in a different type of press, but the individual glass layers are formed using this EXACT SAME PROCESS!!!!!

 

This is exactly how Samsung makes the curved glass in their Galaxy Line up....

 

This patent could not possible hold up on a challenge and should have never been granted....Period....

 

I completely understand the difference in optical quality.  

 

However, the individual formed glass layers in windshield are of very high optical quality. (Probably good enough for a smart phone) The majority of the distortion that you see in a windshield is cause by the plastic layer(s) in the glass lamination and the fact that they are curved more that what a display on the phone would typically be curved...

So let me get this straight. In your "expert" opinion that high-quality curved glass has existed for centuries there is no way a new process could have been developed by Apple that would allow this new process to be granted a patent despite your more recent claims that Samsung makes a curved glass which you imply uses the exact same process and yet oddly also imply that their process is somehow unique from this centuries old process you have claimed to have proved but I have foolishly ignored? Seriously?!

English language, difficult language. Still, it would help to read before commenting, and with read I mean really read and comprehend, not just recite words.

 

The article is clear that what's patented is the positioning mechanism, which allows for more precise alignment of the glass, and which doesn't attach to the glass, which then allows for a faster heating process and less post processing.

 

So the whole thing is about how things are positioned, the speed at which things are heated, and that the glass piece is read for use afterwards and doesn't require extra grinding/smoothing steps as would be the case with older methods. It's not about the drooping over a mold part, which is ancient a method.

It's obvious that not only have you failed to read the patent, but you didn't even read the article you're responding to.

Obviously, the use of molds to form curved glass has been around for a long time. What is novel about Apple's invention is the use of an alignment system which moves and changes geometry as the part is being made. So who has done that previously?

You're asking the wrong question. There has been high quality curved glass for many years - but that's not what Apple is patenting. Apple is patenting one new process for making the curved glass - involving an alignment system that moves as the glass forms. I've never seen a system like that.

Lots of curved glass on eyeglasses, those are optical.

No, they are not. Optical quality glass, or plastic, is able to form a high quality magnified image through an optical system. Windshield glass is not.

He doesn't seem to understand that high quality optical glass is ground and then polished. Newer systems for moulding and forming high quality optical glass is sophisticated and expensive to manage. Some allow thin optical glass to be made without polishing, such as that for monitors. it took years for manufacturers to get it right in their multi billion dollar state of the art factories. Even the glass is different. The strain in a windshield is often obvious.

It's what he claimed. I'm just looking for proof. Well, not really proof because I know it doesn't exist but what he thinks is proof so I have an idea of what he means by his claim.


Those are ground and polish. They are not sheets that are bent into curved shapes. They are optical in quality because the material used — glass, polycarbonate, CR-39 (aka plastic) — have known refractive properties. Therefore a known value of the front and back curves can be used to figure out how the light will refract through the lens which is paired against ones prescription.

A display lens needs to be a different kind of optical quality insofar that there are no visual distortions, but eyeglasses are designed specifically to distort the image so the eyes can function more accurately as it redirects light to the proper part of the retina. Basically it's an external lens to correct the faulty internal lens. This is not something that would be used for any computer display.

The point is? You do realize that lenses for glasses are made of special PLASTIC these days, mostly polycarbonate? But now, and before, when they were made of glass, they consist of optical quality materials that are precision made with optical surfaced moulds, and then often ground and polished to final form. Cheap reading glasses are just moulded, but as many of us who have used them can attest, the quality of the lenses isn't the best. Even so, they cost far more than do mundane things around the house, or even a car windshield, when accounting for size.

It seems as though a couple of you guys don't seem to want to think that there is anything difficult about making precision products.

Strange, Samsung/ HTC/ LG/ Google Nexus all already have high-quality curved glass smartphones which are large, vivid and nice to use.

They were made out of curved glass much longer than they've been made out of polycarbonate.

Yes, and as I said, they were ground and polished. You aren't adding anything useful to this conversation. You aren't giving any real information. Simply restating the obvious isn't proving your point, whatever that may be.

If you bothered to fully read the article, you would have noticed that curved glass for phones is being made. Apple's patent is for making this glass easier, and more cheaply. No one is denying that Samsung is using curved glass now. Though, I don't see any advantage to curved glass, only disadvantages, as I mentioned earlier.

You don't actually understand other people's posts, do you?

It would be interesting to see Apple winning again the 1st place for cutting edge devices, by launching these display in the post iPhone era. :D