Why do Ceramic Stains Play an Important Role in Ceramic Industry?

Ceramic stains are a mix of ceramic oxides and coloring metal oxides. When the same is melted, quenched, and then grounded, it leads to mesh size. It is coloured with organic dyes to create a fired color or fritted colorants. All this is done to create a consistent and stable colorant. This colourant does not get dissolved in the glaze melt, unlike coloring metal oxides.

The colorants are also much safer to be used compared to the raw metal oxides. It allows repeatable and consistent results without any effort. You can also tweak the colour selection to get the desired hue. Though they look expensive, but they are not. A lot of time is spent in the glaze testing to make the consistency of a commercial stain reliable.

The role of Ceramic Stains in the Ceramic industry

Ceramic stains are the colouring oxides that are suspended in water. It may contain frit or kaolin too. Commercial ceramic powders are used in glazes, clay bodies, slips, and engobes. When the colouring oxides are fritted, reground, and colored with organic dyes, it leads to a fired color.

In the previous times, the glaze was made with feldspar, ash, and iron-rich clays. This creates brown pots or earth-tone colour. Then, the use of metal oxides was started. The oxides like copper oxide, chrome oxide, manganese, and iron oxides were blended with opacifiers and led to the production of colours. This needed a lot of knowledge about glaze chemistry and firing to get desired colours. Due to the lack of this knowledge, potters accepted the glazes somehow.

The emergence of commercial stain companies led to the provision of a detailed list of oxides present in every stain. Since the manufacturers know the kind of oxides needed for a stain now, they know which colour can be achieved.

As ceramic stains and oxides contain coloring metal oxides as well as other ceramics materials such as opacifiers, silica, and alumina, the ceramic industry uses the same to glaze bases and achieve a glossy glaze surface to turn matte. How much pigment is needed, depends on the desired colour intensity, which can vary from 1% to 10%.

Ceramic industry uses pigments to coat ceramic materials. It makes the products look more attractive and make them more durable too.  and utility is obtained by formulating these coating applications of pigments on ceramics.

One of the other applications of pigments in ceramics is to make glazes for different whiteware ceramics such as sanitary ware, tile, dinnerware, etc. The usage of ceramic stains also ensures the prevention of ceramic corrosion and colour fading. The pigment coating forms a protective layer along with other kinds of chemicals. Other than preventing corrosion, the lasting effect of colours is also enhanced.

Ceramic Stains Manufacturer IPNR Endura provides full chromatic range of ceramic pigments for colour stability, high performance, and homogeneity.