Electrical porcelain troubleshooting
What’s the best way to troubleshoot and fix common defects in my porcelain production?
The production of large electrical porcelain specimens is extremely sensitive, especially during shaping, drying, and green handling. Insufficient body strength or plasticity can lead to serious cracks that require reprocessing or result in unrecoverable pieces.
How to improve shaping and workability in electric porcelain?
To achieve good shaping properties, it is vital to use clays with high plasticity. Imerys utilizes a specialized workability test to assess how much energy can be applied to a formulation before it cracks.
- High workability clays: Using these minerals allows for faster production and better control over crack formation.
- Recommended products: Hymod Blue (UK), M & D (US), Thaiplas BC2 (Thailand), and PowerClay ND10 (India).
What are the best solutions for drying and firing defects of electrical porcelain?
Drying stresses can be reduced by using clays with balanced mineralogy to prevent shrinkage cracks. For firing, especially with large specimens, using low-carbon products is essential to prevent "blue or black coring" caused by trapped gases.
- Shrinkage control: Hymod Blue (UK) and M & D (US) offer the balanced mineralogy needed to manage drying stress.
- Gas release: These same low-carbon products allow gases to escape more easily, enabling faster firing with fewer core defects.
FAQ
These defects occur when gases generated during firing cannot be released properly. Using low-carbon clays like Hymod Blue or M & D helps prevent this issue.
Electrical insulators are subject to high stresses throughout their lifetime. Maximizing fired strength through low-silica clay selection ensures the product can withstand these conditions.
Clays with high alkali levels prevent the body from being too refractory. This ensures a homogeneous fired structure and prevents poor dielectric characteristics.
Ceramics
Imerys supplies high-performance mineral solutions used in ceramic manufacturing across sanitaryware, tableware, tiles and technical ceramics. Our portfolio of kaolin, ball clay, feldspar, wollastonite and talc supports ceramic body formulation, glaze performance and firing stability. Ceramic producers across Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa, North and South America rely on Imerys minerals to improve product strength, surface quality, whiteness and manufacturing efficiency.
