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Inside a GIANT Brick Factory - How Clay Bricks Are Made
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Jan 24, 2024
A few years ago, I had the chance to see up close how bricks are made in the largest brick factory in North America. Few people get an insider’s view of a manufacturing facility like this; brickmaking is a fascinating process. 🔨 Do it yourself, not _by_ yourself : ► https://baileylineroad.com/ ✅ *_Step-by-step_* plans to build your life of *_true freedom:_* ► https://baileylineroad.com/course-library/ 🏡 Free, expert advice to *_build and customize_* your dwelling: ► Home Building & Addons: https://bit.ly/homebuilding101 ► Off-Grid Energy: https://bit.ly/blroffgrid ► Build a Bathroom: https://bit.ly/buildabathroom ► Everything HVAC: https://bit.ly/blrhvac ► Landscaping: https://bit.ly/blrlandscaping ► Gardening and Farming: https://bit.ly/gardenandfarm ► Woodworking & Cabinets: https://bit.ly/woodandcabinets ► Project Designs & Plans: https://bit.ly/designsandplans 🔔 Subscribe and never miss an upload: ► http://bit.ly/BLRchannel
View Video Transcript
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In October 2018 I had the chance to take a detailed technical tour of the
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Brampton brick plant. This is the largest brick manufacturing facility in North
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America and plant manager Ziggy Pabla led me through the tour. The bricks at this plant are made from clay that comes from ground up shale
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rock. The large reddish brown lump on the left side is red shale and the one right
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next to it is gray shale and they're pulverized and combined as a raw
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material. The larger whitish lump to the right is gypsum and that's an impurity
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that's removed from the deposit before grinding. The shed in the background is
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where the pulverized shale rock coming from the quarry is stored. It's
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transported to the plant itself for further processing through that overhead conveyor system you see. The pulverized shale is transported by that conveyor
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over to this area here. There's a series of hoppers and some further grinding and
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refinement goes on in this place. Modern brick plants use a process of
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extrusion where the clay powder is mixed with water to about an 11% moisture
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content. It's squeezed through this extruding die with the excess peeled off
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like you see here. This whole end of the process is powered by the 600 horsepower
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motor. There are several lines like this in the Brampton brick plant. They all
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have motors like this for that extrusion process. While I was at the plant the machinery shut down for a little while and I had a
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chance to grab some of this extruded clay. I was surprised how hard it was
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Sort of like plasticine but drier and harder and shiny on one side like you
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see here. At this stage the extrusion is like one long brick and it gets its
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coloring and decorative treatment as that extrusion rolls along the next stage of the line. Part of the decorative treatment involves applying sand
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periodically as the extrusion moves along and this creates different colors and textures when the brick is finished and fired
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The brick they're working on in this batch is distressed which means the
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corners have irregularities on them to make them look old and that's what these
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rollers are doing right here. This process would have happened before the
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coloring and the sand application. This is an electric eye here that's measuring the coloring of the brick to
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make sure it's up to specs. Normally the extrusion would be whipping by but it
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stopped here as I mentioned for a few minutes and I can get a look at that
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Now a little while later the line was still stopped and the clay started to
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dry out. So we see some cracks there which means that this whole run is more
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or less useless. So when the plant fired back up again all those cracked chunks
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were broken up and sent by this conveyor back to that grinding facility
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that I told you about initially. Now here the extrusions are being cut to a
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particular length so that they can be further processed down the line into
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actual brick shapes. The cut lengths of extrusion are forced through a series of wires that actually
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slices them to the height of the brick that's desired. It does a nice clean job
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and it trims the end as well as cutting all the individual bricks
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Now it's time for the unfired bricks to be picked up and assembled in a certain
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orientation for moving through the kiln and for firing. That's what this
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equipment does. It's going to pick up the bricks and stack them in a certain way
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so that they can travel on to the kiln on these trolleys here. Temperatures in
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the kiln will peak out at about 1,100 degrees Celsius and it'll hold that
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temperature for many hours. So the trolleys themselves need to be protected
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against the heat. This is the kiln itself and it's kind of a long tunnel where the
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trolleys travel through. Different areas in the kiln have different temperatures and so that's why it's so long so they can get the time and conditions required
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This is looking inside the kiln while firing is going on and you can see some
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some glowing material back there. As I said 1,100 degrees Celsius is quite hot
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and that's what's required to make these bricks hard and weatherproof. The Brampton brick plant produces about 800,000 bricks per day
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and it does this with only seven machine operators at the controls. That's why you
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don't see a lot of people walking around in this plant. This is a screen that an
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operator would look at. It happens to be the screen for the kiln. But the job of
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the operator is just to make sure everything continues to operate smoothly and if some part of the line automatically shuts itself down they
5:20
need to find out why and see if they can rectify it themselves or call in some
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specialized technicians. This graph shows the varying temperatures within the kiln as a particular batch of bricks goes through. It's very important that
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the bricks be ramped up in temperature and then held at peak temperature for a
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minimum amount of time and then cooled off. Even the movement of the trolleys is
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computer-controlled and here you see a trolley that has just recently come out
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of the kiln that you see here. Now the interesting thing is even though it was
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very hot in the kiln, at least in the middle part, the bricks are just slightly
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warm to the touch as they come out. And the reason for that is because all of
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the heat in the kiln after it's done its job has been reclaimed for another
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purpose. That other purpose is to dry the bricks completely before they go
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into the kiln. The hot air extracted from the kiln travels through these
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insulated ducts. Even though there are many checks during the manufacturing process, the finished product is visually checked against a set of master bricks
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These finished bricks are being gathered and stacked onto pallets for shipping
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out and also for easier handling on the building sites. The gaps that you see in the rows of bricks as they're being stacked are for
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forklift, job site forklift, to slip in and lift off several rows of bricks at a
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time for plunking down on scaffolding for brick layers to lay. This part of the
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operation is placing small thin pieces of plywood between the layers so the
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forklift forks won't damage the bricks that are immediately on top of them
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I hope you've enjoyed this tour as much as I have. Besides being the largest
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plant in North America, Brampton Brick is probably one of the most efficient, too
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producing about five million bricks per worker per year