Ceramic Tile Manufacturing: Presses, Kilns and ABB Robots

Ceramic tile manufacturing turns clay, sand and minerals into a surface that lasts for decades. A modern plant mills the raw materials, presses a tile, dries it, glazes and prints it, fires it in a kiln, then sorts and packs it. Most of those steps already run on machines, and robots are filling the gaps between them. This post covers how tiles were made in the past, what the news this autumn says about new plants, and where ABB robots could handle tiles, sort them and pack them. ABB has few public tile projects, so some of this describes fit, not installations.

A ceramic tile factory in Japan, the kind of plant that presses, glazes and fires tiles. Photo: B.Wisp / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From glazed bricks to the dust press

The earliest surviving tiles are believed to date from around 3550 BCE. Mesopotamian builders fired glazed and coloured bricks at temperatures between roughly 950 and 1,150 degrees Celsius, and the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, dated to about 575 BCE, still shows what that skill could do. The gate is now partly reconstructed in Berlin. It is a fair picture of the method: bricks were shaped, glazed and fired, then set into the wall to form the pattern.

Glazed brick lions on the Ishtar Gate of Babylon, rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin. Photo: Kurt Kaiser / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Tiles became everyday objects later. Delftware wall tiles were common in Holland from the 16th century and were exported across Northern Europe. Many were painted by hand, and the slight differences between neighbouring tiles are easy to see on an old wall. In the Victorian era, machines began to make patterned tiles in large numbers, and the results were level and cheap enough for hallways, kitchens and public buildings. A craft product had become an industrial one, with the mould and the press at its centre. That shift made tiles a staple of ordinary buildings.

Old Dutch Delft tiles on a wall above a radiator. Photo: Adrian S Pye / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Hand presses show how the process worked before big plants. At the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, a 1987 survey photographed a worker pressing tiles from plaster molds with a hand press built in 1986. Modern plants use the same idea at a far greater scale. Powdered clay is pressed into shape in a dust press, and ASTM describes porcelain tile as generally made that way. The pressed tile is then dried and glazed, ready for the kiln.

A worker presses tiles from plaster molds with a hand press built in 1986 at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, Pennsylvania, photographed in 1987. Photo: Jet Lowe, HAER / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Presses, kilns and the robots between them

Tile production is now a global industry. Estimates put world output, excluding roof tiles, at 12.7 billion square metres in 2019. Around Sassuolo in Italy, more than 300 ceramic factories operate, and the district makes 80 percent of Italian ceramic tiles. News this autumn shows the investment continues. In September, CemNet reported that Grupo Lamosa had raised its investment in a new tile plant in Tlaxcala, Mexico, to US$220 million, with construction due to start in November and about 250 jobs planned. Those figures show a field that is large, concentrated and still expanding.

Workers on a ceramic tile line at the worker run Zanon (FaSinPat) factory in Neuquen, Argentina, 2005. Photo: Guglielmo Celata / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A plant has a long chain of heavy, hot or fragile steps. Presses form the tile, dryers remove water, glazing and printing lines decorate it, and a kiln fires it. After firing, the tile is inspected, sorted by shade and size, stacked and packed. Robots add the most value at the ends of the line, where loads are repetitive and tiles are slippery and sharp. Loading kiln cars, unloading them and building pallets are the usual jobs, and they are a physical strain on workers. Kiln loading in particular needs care, because tiles must sit in the right pattern to fire evenly.

Inside a glaze kiln at the Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, where saggers and tiles were stacked on shelves. Photo: Jet Lowe, HAER / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

ABB has handled ceramics before. At Wade Ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent, an ABB robot places flagons before the first firing. For tile specifically, an automation.com report describes ABB FlexPicker robots working with the engineering firm EMC on mosaic tile assembly. FlexPickers are fast delta robots that pick small items from a moving belt. That speed suits mosaics, where many small tiles must be placed in a pattern. A cell like this is usually built and tested first in RobotStudio before any tiles move.

An ABB robot places flagons before the first firing at Wade Ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent. Photo: ABB

What comes next for tile plants

At the end of the line, a palletizing robot can stack boxes of tiles after sorting. ABB's IRB 460 is a four axis palletizer with a reach of 2.4 metres, and the IRB 660 is another palletizer in the same family. Tile makers such as SACMI already sell sorting and packing lines with gantry palletizers, so ABB's arms would compete with a mature field. Their advantage is flexibility, because the same arm can switch between box sizes and pallet patterns as the product mix changes. That choice matters for a plant that sells many tile sizes.

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots picking from a conveyor at high speed. Photo: ABB

The open problems are cost, safety and skills. Large formats such as slabs are heavy and break easily, so grippers must be chosen with care and tested before they run. A cell also needs guarding or sensors such as SafeMove near people. Energy is another strain: Business Standard reported in September that a gas crisis was pushing ceramics firms toward the brink, and kilns burn a lot of gas. Our guide to ABB robot use cases shows how similar plants set up palletizing. Training for operators and maintenance staff has to be planned from the start.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizing robot stacking boxed products at the end of a line. Photo: ABB

Looking ahead, tile plants will likely keep adding automation at the dry, repetitive ends of the line, while presses and kilns remain specialist machines. Tile art may also change. At Royal Delft, a Digital Delft Blue painting robot has been shown in the museum, a small sign that painted designs can be repeated by a machine. For engineers, the near term opportunity is flexible handling, such as sorting, stacking and packing many sizes of tile with one cell. Robots from ABB could join that handling work step by step, as a possibility.

The Digital Delft Blue painting robot on display at Royal Delft, 2024. Photo: Andy Li / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

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