Engineered Surfaces for Exceptional Performance
Engineered Surfaces for Exceptional Performance

Brick Manufacturing

Man has for many years used many different materials for constructing and building dwellings, though none more-so than the brick. In the ancient city of Ur, in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the first true arch of sun-baked brick was made about 4000 B.C. The arch itself has not survived, but a description of it includes the first known reference to mortars other than mud. Bitumen slime was used to bind the bricks together.

Essentially, bricks are produced by mixing ground clay with water, forming the clay into the desired shape, and drying and firing.

The brick manufacturing process has six stages:

  1. Mining and storage of raw materials
  2. Preparing raw materials
  3. Forming the brick
  4. Drying
  5. Firing and cooling
  6. De-hacking and storing finished products.

Within these stages components in the manufacturing process become subjected to Corrosion, Wear, and Heat - all of which can affect downtime and productivity.

The Metal Spray process has been around since the early 1900’s and has used its ability to protect surfaces from these types of wear offering protection to OEM parts as well as reclamation. 

The image to the right (top) show brick kiln carts as nearing their end of life, typical condition after years of operation, then photos of the new plates after arc spray is applied to the flame affected zone. The Arc Spray provides erosion resistance from the gas burner’s flame application inside the kiln.     

In the Arc Spray process, the raw material in the form of two metallic wires are melted by an electric arc. This molten material is then transferred to the substrate by compressed air. The molten metal spray solidifies on the substrate to form a dense, strongly adherent coating.

The process allows for many variations of metal materials to be applied to provide numerous solutions to varying forms of wear. With the metal spray process, Ceramic and Plastic materials can also be applied using associated metal spray equipment.

Other components that are subject to wear include: augers, the edges of screws, pulveriser mill scrappers, cones, combs, crushing hammers, mixer blades etc.

The wear of Core Brick Bridges is minimised and repaired by using an Oxygen Acetylene Hard Facing powder spray torch to apply Tungsten carbide in a 60 HRc Nickel, Chrome Boron matrix.

Both Metal Spraying, Hard facing and Brick Manufacturing processes have shown their maturity and ability to develop to meet today’s expectations of increased efficiency with minimised negative effects on the environment.