Getting silk-screen drying and tempering to play nice together is a bit of a balancing act. It’s all about the heat. If you go too hard and too fast, the ink bubbles or bleeds, and your pattern is ruined. But if you’re too timid with the heat, the ink won’t bond, and the glass won’t have the strength it needs to be safe. Our trick? Shortwave infrared (IR) lamps. They hit the ink layer directly without turning the entire piece of glass into an oven. Why shortwave IR actually works Shortwave IR is fast. Like, really fast. It punches through the ink and flashes the solvent off before the glass even gets close to its softening point. You need a serious burst of power here—a sharp thermal spike that cures the ink instantly. The goal is to keep all that heat right on the surface. That’s how you avoid that annoying “halo effect” where the ink decides to wander past the screen lines. The gear and the trade-offs We use quartz tubes with specific halogen fills to keep the light output steady. These things are wired for high wattage because, let’s be honest, you want to keep the line moving. But here is the catch: you can’t just crank the voltage to speed things up. Do that, and you’ll burn out your filaments or create hot spots that crack the glass. It’s a tug-of-war between how close the lamps are and how fast the conveyor is moving. If you move the lamps closer, the heat is more intense, but your margin for error disappears. Making it all fit together Putting the IR drying right before the tempering furnace is a huge win for your floor plan. You get to ditch the separate drying oven, which saves a ton of space and cuts down your cycle time. Just a heads-up, though—you’ll need a cooling system that can handle the heat buildup around the IR bank. If the housing isn’t vented properly, the lamps will just cook themselves and die early. We usually suggest a closed-loop temperature sensor. It adjusts the power based on how thick the glass is, which keeps your patterns crisp and your glass strong. Simple as that.