Ceramic and Tile Testing for Morbi Manufacturers

XRD is one of those tests that earns its place at both ends of the production process. Run it on raw materials before firing, and you know exactly what mineral phases you’re starting with. Run it again on the fired body, and the kiln cycle’s effects become readable in the data.

Quartz is what gives a tile its hardness, that’s the SiO2 contribution. Cristobalite needs watching, left unchecked, this silica polymorph shows up in the fired body and causes crazing down the line. And if residual clay minerals are still present after firing, that’s the kiln telling you something didn’t go right with the cycle.

Some defects simply don’t show themselves under normal lighting. The Hitachi SU3800 SEM at MNRDC operates at nanometre resolution, which is a different world from anything a production-line visual check can offer.

What turns up at that scale is often surprising, pin holes sitting inside glaze layers, micro-cracks that thermal shock left behind, contamination particles pressed into the surface during production, delamination developing quietly at the glaze-body interface, print transfer that looks fine from a distance but isn’t. EDS paired alongside the SEM adds elemental mapping, which moves the conversation from “there’s a problem” to “here’s where it came from.”

A floor tile’s job is to take punishment and not show it. The Pin-on-Disc Tribometer at MNRDC, running on ASTM G99, applies controlled sliding friction to the surface and measures exactly how fast material disappears under that load.

Where this pays off commercially is in the comparison work. Two glaze formulations that look identical on paper often behave very differently under friction testing. Getting that data before a production run commits is considerably cheaper than finding out afterward.

Kiln profiles that get passed down through years of production aren’t always as optimised as people assume. DSC/STA Thermal Analysis at MNRDC puts actual numbers behind what’s happening thermally, which is the only reliable basis for making changes with confidence.

The transitions it captures are specific and meaningful, clay losing its chemically bound water, feldspar beginning to melt, the quartz inversion sitting predictably at 573°C, the glaze moving through its glass transition. Each one shows up clearly in the curve, and together they give manufacturers a thermal map that makes firing decisions something you can defend rather than something you inherited. Head here to read in-depth information on Pin-on-Disc Tribometer at MNRDC, Parul University.

• Instrument quality: Hitachi SU3800 SEM (Japan), Bruker D6 PHASER XRD (Germany) with ICDD PDF-4 database and TOPAS Rietveld, Nanosurf Core AFM (Switzerland).
• Turnaround: 10 working days standard, 1 day urgent. For a manufacturer troubleshooting a defect on a production line, the 1-day urgent option provides same-day answers.
• Distance: Vadodara to Morbi is approximately 200 km via NH-27, a 3-4 hour drive. Moreover, samples can be couriered too.