On the tempering line, the break-out station is where you earn your paycheck. Too cold, and the fracture runs wild, chewing up the edges. Too hot, and thermal stress spreads, turning the break into a guessing game. Convection heaters always feel a step behind, and those uneven hot spots force you to back off the line speed just to salvage yield. What we built, and why it matters We specked the infrared lamp for glass breaking as a short-wave NIR quartz emitter, tuned to hit soda-lime glass right where it absorbs. The heating system hits 20 kW/m², so the surface jumps in temperature without soaking the body. It goes from ambient to operating temp in 2 seconds—keeps up with indexing conveyors without sweat. Across the heated zone, uniformity stays within ±3%, so you don’t get local gradients that drive uncontrolled cracking. The lamp runs at 230 V with a standard industrial connector, and you can drop it into compact arrays, replacing halogen modules without rewiring the whole station. Why it behaves better in the real world In practice, the lamp gives you a sharp, repeatable thermal front. Heat a narrow band, induce a clean tensile stress, and the glass breaks along the intended line with minimal edge damage. That means fewer rejects in tempering, more consistent bending profiles, and cycle times that hold steady at 60–90 parts per minute. Energy use drops because the power goes straight into the glass, not into heating air. Units have run 5,000+ hours with less than 5% output drop, so you spend less time swapping lamps and more time shipping glass. Here are a couple of things to keep straight. The lamp is sensitive to surface contamination—oils and coatings shift emissivity and throw off the thermal profile. Keep the glass clean and line the beam up with the intended fracture line. And because the response is fast, wire it into your PLC and run closed-loop control on current and temperature. You’ll need minor re-tuning when thickness or tint changes. The payoff is predictable break-out and maintenance intervals you can plan around.