Ceramic and Vitrified Tile Manufacturing Process

What is Ceramic tiles or vitrified tiles

It’s basically a product of clay same like brick but made carefully with high precision to ensure
the all tiles have the same dimensional as well as strength and aesthetic properties in it.

What make it different from clay bricks and how.

Clay bricks are made without removing the impurities in it and ensuring same grain sizes in it.
Also they are fired in very uncontrolled way which makes some bricks over-burnt and some
bricks under-burnt and have no equipment to ensure the perfectness of each brick.

So how the Tiles are manufactured in control environment

The clay use in manufacturing of tiles is checked for its clay properties and other chemical
requirements. Mostly here in India clay use for manufacturing of tile comes from Gujarat and
Rajastan. It’s in very raw form just like excavated earth is loaded in wagons and transported to
factory.

Clay is also imported from other Countries to achieve more strength and plasticity during
manufacturing and it is blended with the other clays.

In the process of manufacturing of tile first the raw clay is loaded into the hoppers and
blended with minerals in batch mixer homogeneously.
Those clay and minerals are sent via conveyor to a batch mixer to mix in proportion as
specified by manufacturer to achieve the desired properties.

Then the blended mixture is sent to a ball mill and around 33% water by weight is added
into it.
Ball mills content giant alumina balls which crush the clay into a finest slurry through a
rotating action of ball mill and gravity force acting on alumina balls. Below is animated
photo of milling action.
The milling action creates a homogeneous slurry which is taken out from ball mill and
screened to remove the uncrushed clay or stones.

After passing through this hopper the slurry is further moved to a vibrating screens which
have the mesh size of 75 microns. The vibrating actions ease out the process of making a
fine slurry to pass through it and the oversized material to go out.

The passed material then go through the channel where magnetic purification of slurry is
done.
All the material which does not pass through, is again sent back to a ball mill and re grinded to
finer size (not a single stone is wasted at tile manufacturing unit, even a waste from backed tile
which is cut and grinded for correctness is also re-used for manufacturing)

After passing the screen and magnetic purification, slurry is then pumped with high
pressure pump to a silo through a nozzle which have small holes in it.

The spraying of slurry into a silo is done along with passing hot air into it. Spraying action
and hot air pass makes the slurry to reduce its moisture from 33 to around 5 to 6 % which
forms a finest granules of clay which are slightly moist. After formation of granules they
are further moved to pressing machine which shape the tile body. The hot air pass and
spraying of clay is done in control way to ensure the correct sizes of grains.
The finest clay powder is then sent to a pressing machine via conveyor.
At the pressing machine the properties of tile which to be manufactured are decided, Ceramic
tiles are made by pressing powder into the mould at low pressure and vitrified tiles are made by
pressing powder into mould at slightly high pressure.

The classification of the any tile is based on its water absorption property which comes from this
process. Pressing at high pressure ensure the extra amount of powder to be pressed in same
volume of tile creating lesser voids in base tiles which corresponds to low water absorption and
vice a versa.

For ceramic tiles the pressing of powder is done at 450 bars of pressure and for vitrified tiles
pressing is done at 550 bars of pressure

At pressing machine, we can mould any size tile by providing specification and making
arrangements of mould by simply programming it with all data.

Once the command is given, a fully automatic pressing machine fills the mould with moist
powder of clay and presses it to required pressure and sends it forward through roller
conveyor for further processing machine.
The push tile further here is called as green tile or biscuit.

We can have any shape in the back of tile and can be given in the mould, the top of the tile
is plain or have designs on it (rustic tiles) to give the feeling of natural stone.

Rustic finish tiles are slightly costlier as the surface is not plain and the process of its
topping do add additional costs but it gives a natural rock filling on top of it.
Must know – the size of the moulded tiles is always more than that of required size, generally
they are made 15mm + on higher size coz during pressing, there is a chance that tile ends may
lift upwards and in further processes may get some defects which can be nullify by cutting it
after topping / printing.

The color of biscuit or green tile or the back of tile which is not visible, depends on the
properties of the clay and mostly they are brownish or whitish.

So next time when you get two batches of tiles and if there back color varies, then either that tiles
are not manufacture at same factory or there is change in source of clay.

The green tiles then further goes from a drier which removes it moisture content
completely.
Once the tiles are reached on other end of drier, they are completely dry and does not have any
moisture in it and ready for further processing.

The green tiles are tested for its flexure strength to ensure the quality of batch.

Dried tiles then coated with engobe, glaze and sent forward for printing. It can be either printed
with rotary drum or digital printing machine.

Here onwards for each step of coating tile is first coated with adhesive and then air dried and
each coating is done.

The green tile is then goes through a conveyor where adhesive is sprayed on it and air dried
with fan.
After this the engobe and glaze is applied on the tile surface.

Engobe is the main layer on the tile surface which ensure no leakages from top to back of tile or
from back of tile to the top surface (it’s just like a waterproofing coat). When you see a wet
patches on tile surface then it’s clear indication of improper engobe application on it.
After engobe and glaze application tile is further moved to a printing assembly, it might be a roto
type drum printer which gives color in 4 or more layer with adhesive application and drying
before printing each layer.

In roto drum printer a color minerals are flowing through drums and when tile passes from the
below of drum surface a layer of minerals is printed on it (just like how we apply paint on wall
surface with roller brush).

Below photo shows assembly of 4 roto drum printer.

There are two technologies to print the design on tile surface

Roto Drum printer – As it’s a rotating drum which impress the color on tile surface, we can’t
make a same design print on each tile surface and all tiles have different combination of surface
texture (more likely they looks same), with this technology we cannot have fancy or more
designs printed on it. This is use to give finish on the flat or rustic surface tiles.

Digital printing – In digital printing we can mimic almost any style, color combination and any
type of surface finish look (we can make it as to look like wood, aluminium etc). After
application of englobe the tiles are sent through a giant digital printer where the program
automatically prints the design on each tile surface as per the design, with this technology we can
print anything on tile surface, we can make a your photo printed on tile or printed in parts on tile
which makes combination of 12 tiles to show what is the photo.

After completion of printing on tile surface, the automatic laser guided robots stack them
and move to a kiln where heating of tiles is done.

After stacking tiles they are further moved to heat treatment through a roller conveyor,
tiles are heated up 1200 degree for ceramic and 1350 degree for vitrified. Tiles are heated
in 5 different temperature zone in kiln of length 145 meter.
At each steps firing temperatures are controlled automatically and can be monitored on
computer screen or in control panel.
After completion of journey through the kiln, when tile comes out from the kiln, its
temperature is around 80 to 100 degree.
After heating tiles are stacked and allowed for some time to cool down.

Then tiles are moved further by laser guided robot to cutting and chamfering assembly,
where a final touch to the tile is given for its size and chamfered edge.
Some tiles do have lapato finish on top of it, which are done using polishing head assembly.
This treatment gives a unique texture and natural finish to each tile.
The tiles them move from roller conveyor into a cutting and chamfering machine.

Tiles are also given a nano coating on top of it which closes all the micro pin holes on it and
gives anti bacteria and stain resistant property.
Then its moved forward through a roller conveyor where first the lasers check the
properties of tiles and discards the tile which have defects in it.
After going through this, then a manual check by human is done on tile where, the tile
inspector marks its grade of tile and also do marking for rejected tiles.
The tile sorter is a human and siting at there for long time can make him to take wrong decision
as human brain can’t identify what is correct if he continuously looks at the same surface finish.

To avoid the human errors, the tile sorter / inspectors works for only one hour at a time on this
job and takes a break after an hour and other inspector / sorter continues the work.

Then marked tiles are further moved to a packing assembly through a conveyor where the laser
guided equipment do sorting of tile as per the grade (grade of tile had set of parameter and sorter
instruction line mark on the tile), the tiles are automatically sorted for grades like A, B, C and D
(D is rejected tiles).

When system detects a tile which can’t be sorted in any grade, the roller assembly on
conveyor automatically drop the tile from it.
Sorted tiles are then pack by a fully automatic packing machine which wrap the box
packing on it (in set of tile as programmed).

Packed boxes then further moved on conveyor and strap with automatic strapping
machine.
After strapping the boxes, batch number is printed on it.
Then packed boxes are moved through a conveyor, where robotic hand stack them in pallet
which are ready to transport.
The sampling of tile is done and tested in lab for defects, size, thickness, abrasion value,
flexure value and crazing resistance etc.