A variety of shapes for optimal processing
SCHOTT manufactures seamless CONTURAX® Pro profiled tubes in a wide variety of shapes, including triangular, rectangular, hexagonal, and lots of others, with the help of a patented continuous drawing process. This allows processors to avoid costly conversion processes. The tubes are available in lengths of up to almost 4 meters and wall thicknesses of between 0.2 and 5 millimeters. Tubes with a wall thickness of 1.75 millimeters and extremely low tolerance of +/– 0.15 millimeters are needed to produce these ink containers made of glass. The rectangular shape of the ink cartridges allows for space-saving integration into the cash box. At the same time, the square shaped profile tube breaks more easily and evenly than a round tube when the trigger is pulled inside this security application.
“It’s quite exciting and inspiring to enable new applications that meet such high requirements,” says Hermann Tietze, Regional Sales Director EMEA for Technical Tubing at SCHOTT AG. “Normally, our glass needs to be as durable and strong as possible. With these ink cartridges, however, our tubes are expected to break quickly and evenly, without getting damaged during manufacturing or while they are being transported.”
So far, this intelligent cash protection system from Oberthur has been introduced mainly in Western Europe. Now, the company is expecting expansion of its customer base to include other regions of the world. “Simply knowing that these glass ink containers make stolen bank notes unusable for criminals acts as a deterrent and could well prevent acts of violence,” adds Hermann Tietze from SCHOTT. “We are pleased to be able to contribute to this,” he concludes.