Thanks for the response.
I’ve actually been doing a tremendous amount of research and experimentation with different materials and films. These NUI Group forums have been a fantastic resource and I hope to reciprocate once my imminent deadline passes.
As regards frosted glass, otherwise known as sandblasted or acid-etched glass (depending on what effect you’re going for), it’s a surface alteration so I wouldn’t particularly have expected it to affect transmissive properties. Tempering glass, or heat strengthening glass, is more of a chemical alteration because (I imagine) the tempering process affects the crystal structure of the glass. For one, suddenly the glass is a poor conductor of heat. It’s much harder and it also shatters differently.
I’m mainly concerned about IR transmissivity because, obviously, that’s a requirement for rear illumination DI. I had been hearing various tales about how tempered glass can be used as a heat shield and became concerned about how that might involve blocking IR light. I gave one of the engineers at Edmund Optics a call though, and she’s fairly confident that all glass, tempered or not, will only begin to affect light when it’s wavelength approached 1 micron. As we’re all mainly using 880nm IR LEDs, near-IR, she doesn’t think tempering the glass will be a problem.
I sent out an order for a large plate of it just this morning and wanted to check with the NUI Group forums to see if any of you had a more definite answer or maybe even some experience working with tempered glass?
