To find out the suitability of clay for sanitaryware body we need to do the following tests:
1. Test for soluble salts
2. Test for excess sand or other mineral fragments
3. Test for the presence of lime
4. Test for plasticity
5. Test for water of plasticity
6. Test for dry shrinkage
7. Test for fried shrinkage
8. Test for firing properties
9. Test for water absorption
10. Test for deflocculating demand
11. Test for permeability
12. Test […]

If such a coil of clay can be bent into a ring of an inch in diameter without showing any cracks, the clay can be classified as plastic clay.
Clay is commercially mined either as open strip mining or as underground mining. In open mining the clay is scraped or planed off by power machines. Kaolins […]

The colour of the clay in natural state may vary from grey, tan, red, brown, black and white. The colour denotes the presence of either iron or carbonaceous matter. Most of the clay contains considerable amount of iron and carbonaceous matter. Iron in the form of hematite or iron oxide produces the red colour, in […]

Next to lime and soluble salts, the other impurity in the clay is too much sand or mineral fragments. Since sanitaryware manufacturing is based on slip casting process, the presence of sand and mineral granules in clay is considered to be a serious contamination.
The small silica or any other mineral granules in the sanitaryware bodies […]

The soluble salts in clay can be detected by scum or white stain which appears when the clay is wet down to the plastic state and then allowed to dry up. The other impurity which disqualifies clay for sanitaryware manufacturing is ‘Lime’.
Lime or bits of limestone cannot be tolerated in clay. The clay contaminated with […]

The oil or gas well miners can be approached for necessary information. They normally do very deep drilling in the earth to find out oil or gas availability and hence they will have lot of information about materials available under the surface of earth.
Another source of help for identifying good clay resources are the state […]

Along creeks and rivers or where the earth is cut down for tearing over any other infrastructure facilities, one can find the layers of clay that so frequently under lie the top soil. If one does closer inspection by collecting samples and doing few simple field tests, one can quickly determine whether it is clay […]

One of the greatest advantages of ceramics is that the raw materials are very commonly available and can be usually found in the surface of the earth and can be used without recourse to outside suppliers or commercial process. Everyone who is seriously interested in ceramics should have the experience of findings, digging out and […]

In the wet process, the different ball clays as per the blend requirement, are mixed with water in a high speed blunger. The liquid slurry is then passed through a set of sieves and magnets to remove the impurities. This is then passed through a filterpress where cakes are formed. In the filter pressing operation, […]

After this process of aging the clay lumps are shredded using a clay shredding mechine. The shredded clay lumps are once again carried over to different storage yard and stored for few more months before the next process of blending. The ball clays stored in different storage yard as per the different physical and chemical […]