In fact, the 30-year development of modern ceramic industry in China is the 30-year continuous innovation of production technology and products. From screen printing to roller printing, to inkjet printing and dry grinding; From wear-resistant bricks and colored glazed bricks to polished bricks and antique bricks, to microcrystalline stone, ceramic plates, thin plates and thin bricks, generations of ceramic builders in China have pushed the industry forward with their hard work and innovative spirit.

The innovation of ceramic products is endless, and the lack of self-discipline restricts the development.

In the sixth lecture of this issue of Taocheng Lecture Hall, Dr. Yin will give a detailed introduction to the development process of ceramic tile product innovation in China, deeply analyze the influence and promotion of new technology on product innovation, interpret the future direction of ceramic tile product innovation in China, and also point out the difficulties and problems faced by China ceramic product innovation, so as to point out the direction for product innovation of industry enterprises.

Concept of tile innovation

Ceramic tile, durable, antifouling and easy to clean; At the same time, it is colorful and beautiful. Ceramic tiles have both functional and decorative values, and are endowed with dual characteristics of practicality and decoration, making ceramic tiles an important building decoration material. Its new products and innovations will certainly involve all aspects related to these performance characteristics:

Style innovation

Style innovation is mainly manifested in two aspects. On the one hand, it is the design innovation of color, fancy and decoration of ceramic tiles, which also makes ceramic tiles sometimes have their own popular colors. For example, supersaturated colors and heavy colors with large patterns are popular in outdoor and public places, and the guiding position of plain colors and flower patterns in home improvement projects. More than ten years ago, the concept of "ceramic fashion" was put forward by Oushennuo Ceramics and Kelpolo Ceramics. On the other hand, tiles are sometimes more the characteristics of fashion materials than the characteristics of fashion itself, so the later "cutting" is also an important part of tile style innovation, that is to say, the cutting, combination, collocation and mosaic of tiles is an eternal theme of tile style innovation. The innovation of tile style is often directly reflected in the popularity of specific surface glaze color, such as crystal brick, polished crystal brick, wood grain brick, marble brick, microcrystalline stone and so on. Ceramic fashion and ceramic tile art (art decoration renderings) are the important directions of style innovation.

Functional innovation

Durability, pollution resistance and easy cleaning are the most basic functions of ceramic tiles. With the wide application of ceramic tiles, the functions of ceramic tiles are constantly expanding. Such as: antibacterial ceramics and counter-ion tiles used in public health places; Water permeable bricks for tunnels and culverts; Acid and alkali resistant tiles used in chemical workshops and other places; Fluorescent, reflective and luminous tiles for special occasions; Transparent tiles for special decoration; Thermal insulation tile for building energy saving; Anti-static tiles for engine room and gas station.

Quality innovation

Traditional ceramic tile is a ternary system of potassium, aluminum and silicon. In order to find new quality or new performance, all kinds of new tiles appear constantly. For example, a few years ago, Mona Lisa Ceramics developed magnesium-based bricks to develop ultra-white bricks with low zirconium content, and Taiwan Province ceramic tile enterprises developed dolomite (calcium-magnesium-based) bricks to reduce the firing temperature of ceramic tiles. Another example is the glass-ceramic composite brick popular in recent years. By changing the material of glaze, super wear-resistant glaze and special effect glaze can be developed. Dry glaze is a kind of special glaze that has been used more and more in recent years. Adding some functions of ceramic tiles will often become some new selling points of ceramic tiles.

Environmental protection innovation

Environmental protection innovation is the eternal theme of modern society. The environmental protection innovation of ceramic tile mainly refers to the environmental protection function of ceramic tile production process and the energy saving and emission reduction treatment of waste residue. For example, Golden Globe Ceramics uses rare earth tailings to produce ceramic tiles, Lehua Ceramics and other water-permeable bricks are produced for urban environmental protection, and many ceramic enterprises, such as Oushennuo, Hongyu and Mona Lisa Ceramics, use polished brick waste residue as light insulation exterior wall bricks and sound-absorbing and sound-insulating bricks. These products not only treat waste residue, but also have good environmental protection characteristics.

Ceramic tile product innovation is almost accompanied by production technology innovation, such as: popular ink-jet printing in recent years, upcoming ink-jet glazing, various types of dry glazing, continuous research on dry grinding technology that is not yet fully mature, continuous ball milling technology widely used abroad but rare in China, and low-temperature rapid firing technology.

New products and technologies of ceramic tiles

There are many successful cases of new products in ceramic tile industry. Even a new product saved a ceramic enterprise, or helped a ceramic enterprise to a new level. Among them, crystal glaze, golden flower beige, wood grain brick, Pilates and cave stone are impressive.

Ceramic tile bionic product

At present, the bionic products of ceramic tiles mainly include imitation stone (stone decoration renderings), imitation wood grain, imitation cloth grain, imitation dermatoglyphic, imitation wallpaper and so on. Among them, the variety and total amount of imitation stone products are the most, and Dong Peng Cave Stone and Jianyi Marble products are very representative. With the popularization of full glazing technology and inkjet printing technology, marble tiles has almost become a major category of ceramic tile products. With the progress of microcrystal technology, polished brick cloth technology, full polishing, semi-polishing, soft polishing technology and inkjet technology, jade-like products such as Jiajun Ceramics and Oushennuo Ceramics have enriched stone-like tiles. Stone-like tiles (or marble tiles) have always been called the largest category of tile products, which not only broadens the market consumption of tile products, but also extends the tentacles of high-grade stone-like tile products to the stone field. Now some ceramic enterprises have actively participated in domestic and international stone exhibitions.

Wood grain brick is the second kind of ceramic tile bionic product, which has great influence on Loulan ceramics, Jin Yitao ceramics, Kelpolo ceramics and Maolong ceramics. Similar to marble tiles, these wood grain brick products also began to enter the wood floor industry, thus expanding the application field of ceramic tiles. In recent years, in international and domestic ceramic tile exhibitions, you can see antique ship wood, and even rotten wood tiles with special effects, which is a good supplement to the real ancient ship wood and rotten wood that cannot be used as decoration.

Among the products of imitation cloth bricks, the carpet bricks of aristocratic ceramics have achieved great success. The sheepskin brick of Jianyi ceramics, the dermatoglyphic brick of Oushennuo ceramics and Kelpolo ceramics have all left a profound impact on the market. Bionics of ceramic tiles will be a major theme of tile decoration style innovation, and the most important one is the development of imitation stone.

Inkjet printing:

Subverting tile decoration technology

Ink-jet printing is a successful ink-jet printing technology and equipment jointly developed by Spanish Kerajet Company and American Ferro Company, which initially completely blocked the Chinese mainland market. It should be 20 1 1 year that inkjet printing technology began to be popularized and widely applied in China ceramic tile industry. Up to now, it is estimated that China's ceramic tile industry has been equipped with 1300- 1500 inkjet printing equipment and put into use. At the same time, a number of inkjet printer equipment suppliers have emerged inside and outside the industry, such as Hope, Meijia and New Jingtai. Outside the industry, there are Taiwei, Caishen and Tao Jing. In addition to Kerajet, a foreign inkjet printer supplier, there are EFI-Cretaprint and Siti-B&; T, Durst, Tecnoferrari, system, Sacmi, etc. However, domestic inkjet printers have occupied a major market share. Although the domestic ink research and development has also made a substantial breakthrough, it is estimated that the current market share is only 10-20%. Among them, the glaze companies such as Ming Dynasty Technology, Dow Technology, Huilong Technology, Meris and Kanglitai have started to enter the market, and the main share of the domestic market is still Torrecid, Esmalglass-Itacc and Ferro. However, it can still be predicted that in the last two or three years, inkjet printing equipment and ink will all be localized.

With the breakthrough of inkjet printing production technology, its production cost is also constantly breaking through, which finally makes inkjet printing as the main decoration technology of ceramic tile production not only revolutionary, but also subversive. Because of the popularization of ink-jet printing technology, not only the consumption of traditional colored glaze is greatly reduced, but also it is simpler and more direct from the aspects of operation management and technical debugging, and imitation and even copying are also simpler and more direct, which is bound to have a far-reaching impact on the production technology, management and even marketing of the whole ceramic tile. It is estimated that ink-jet printing will account for 60% of the ceramic tile glaze line in China in the future, and the total number of ink-jet printers in China is expected to grow to about 3,000.

Various decorative technologies around inkjet printing

Whether it is the Cersaie exhibition in Italy in September this year, the Guangzhou Ceramic Industry Exhibition in May this year, or the Tecnargilla exhibition in Italy last year, it shows that various decoration technologies around inkjet printing are becoming the focus of technological innovation. The hot spots of fading in this respect include: the ink-jet infiltration glaze technology introduced by Meigao, and this year's Cer-saie exhibition, Meigao exhibited more than 3 meters of ink-jet infiltration ceramic pieces; In the first half of this year, the ink-jet bleeding products of Nobel Ceramics also passed the new product appraisal, and Meigao is also cooperating with several ink-jet printer manufacturers to promote this new technology.

Glazing products using inkjet printing technology are ready to come. This year's Cersaie exhibition can see ink-jet printing products such as heavy glaze, metal glaze, candy glaze, transparent glaze and precious metal glaze. These technologies are mainly introduced by companies such as Torrecid, Esmalglass-Itaca, Ferro and Colorobbia. It is estimated that after one or two years, with the further improvement of inkjet nozzles, these technologies will soon be widely used. Efforts are being made to completely replace various glazing technologies with inkjet printing technology, and even dry powder spraying technology is being developed. It is expected that ink-jet printing technology will gradually become the main technology for decorative printing and glazing of ceramic tiles.

Microsite:

Promote the progress of glass-ceramics technology

Microcrystalline stone, strictly speaking, should be called ceramic glass-ceramic composite brick (or plate), which is a new type of ceramic brick independently developed by China's ceramic industry. Now there are products fired once and twice. No matter whether the product is fired once or twice, a large number of microcrystalline frits will be used, which is more crystal clear than the all-glazed product. As for the proportion of microcrystals in the final product, it seems that not many institutions and researchers care about this data. But generally speaking, microcrystalline products are more wear-resistant than full glazed products.

In fact, almost ten years ago, microcrystalline products were fired twice. However, with the development of inkjet technology, microcrystalline products and thin microcrystalline products are fired at one time. In recent years, microcrystalline products have increased greatly. It is estimated that there are nearly 100 microcrystalline production lines in China, and the prices of microcrystalline products have also dropped sharply, becoming more and more popular. There have been similar so-called "dry grain throwing" products abroad, which seem to be similar to the microcrystalline products in China.

Pottery board

Pottery board (or clay board) is a kind of large-scale plate formed by extrusion. Large-area dry hanging of pottery plates has special decorative effect. In early China, such products were basically imported. In recent years, with the success of ceramic plate manufacturing in Gao Rui, Li Xinjia and Huatai, a large number of ceramic enterprises began to attract ceramic plate projects from 20 10 to 20 12, all over the country (Fujian, 2012). On 20 1 1 year, Wan Li porcelain industry completed the listing of Wan Li International Holdings Co., Ltd. in South Korea, and Zhangzhou ceramic plate and ceramic solar energy production base (Wan Li Solar Energy Technology Co., Ltd.) was officially put into production. The ceramic plate production line in this base is called "7+ 1", which means seven ceramic plate+1 solar panel production lines.

20 1 1 Tsinghua University centennial new Tsinghua school complex adopts brick red Huatai TOB ceramic panels as the building facade. 20 13 the application of new glazed ceramic panels of Gareth in the fa? ade of Guangzhou's tallest building has not only good application effect, but also great influence. Interestingly, Foshan, the largest ceramic tile production and sales base in China, has no ceramic board project, which is estimated to be related to the lack of corresponding raw materials around it. However, it seems that Foshan ceramic enterprises that have gone abroad have not invested in ceramic board projects so far. The ceramic board market itself is small, basically a high-end market. This year, due to the new government's restrictions on the construction of clubhouses and clubs (club decoration renderings), the sales of ceramic plates have been greatly affected, and almost half of the ceramic plate production lines have not started.

Thin bricks and sheets

Driven by the concept of energy saving and emission reduction and tile thinning, the trend of tile thinning has become the direction, but the related product standards, specifications and energy consumption quota indicators are not matched, and the market consumption concept is not in place. Ceramic sheet was first developed by Italian System company, with a thickness of 3mm, and Mona Lisa ceramics is the earliest manufacturer in China, with a thickness of about 5.5 mm In recent years, many domestic ceramic enterprises have started the research and development of ceramic tile thinning, among which ceramic enterprises such as Kelbobo, Jin Yitao, Dong Peng, Loulan, Xinzhongyuan and Huiya have developed a thickness of 600×900(mm) or 600× 6544, with a thickness of 5.5.

In the 20 12 and 20 13 Cersaie exhibitions in Italy, large ceramic plates were one of the highlights, especially in this year's exhibition, with a variety of decorations, the largest reaching 1.8×4(m). At the same time, there are also large porcelain plates with thick thickness (thickness 8 ~ 10 mm) (length >; 3 meters), it is obvious that there has been a new breakthrough in the manufacturing technology of porcelain plates, probably through extrusion. Modena machinery in China also exhibited similar technologies and products for producing ceramic chips by extrusion at the Guangzhou Ceramic Industry Exhibition in May this year. With the maturity of dry firing technology and the improvement of finished product rate, large-scale porcelain thin plates (below 6mm) or thick plates (8 ~ 10 mm) produced by extrusion will soon appear in China.

dry grind

The research and development of dry grinding technology has a history of at least 20 years, and it was once the most primitive ceramic tile production technology. Nowadays, with the progress of technology and the requirements of energy saving and emission reduction, the comprehensive application of dry grinding technology has come to the fore. In recent years, the dry grinding technology of Italian MS company and LB company has no specific application in China due to huge equipment investment, and it is said that it has also gained some market share in Brazil.

At present, Shandong Yike Technology and Foshan Rongzhou No.2 Factory, which are engaged in research and development in this field, have entered the industrial test stage. With the support of the national science and technology project, Xianyang Ceramic Research and Design Institute has been researching and developing dry powder milling for many years, and the whole project is progressing smoothly. It is expected that domestic dry grinding technology and equipment will be put into use in ceramic tile manufacturing enterprises next year, which will be a revolutionary application of energy saving and emission reduction in ceramic tile manufacturing.

Two thoughts on new products and innovation

Originality and protection

Because the whole society places too much emphasis on individuality, the technology and design of ceramic tile industry in China are similar to other industries, obviously not original enough, and much more than shanzhai. Almost every year, technical designers who come back from foreign exhibitions in Italy, Spain, etc. are refreshing and full of praise for foreign exhibitions, products, designs and technologies.

Due to the lack of intellectual property protection and industry self-discipline, imitation and plagiarism are rampant in China ceramic tile industry. During the Tao Bo conference in September, I hosted a forum on design innovation. When I asked an industry designer in Zibo "how to look at the fake ceramic tiles in Zibo", the designer replied directly "Many ceramic tiles in Zibo are fake, while ceramic tiles in Foshan are fake Italian and Spanish tiles, and ceramic tiles in Zibo are fake Foshan ceramics".

If these three problems are not solved well, the original spirit is not enough, the protection of intellectual property rights is not enough, and the spirit of industry self-discipline is not enough, the output of ceramic tiles in China will exceed 654.38+000 billion square meters, and there is still no chance to become the world ceramic tile center.

New product success and transition update

Because there are many cases of relying on one or two new products to promote the growth of ceramic enterprises or bring a ceramic enterprise back to life, winning with new products has become the knowledge of the industry. However, due to imitation and imitation, the life of new ceramic tile products in China is short, and designers and technicians need to innovate and develop new products continuously. Although many well-known ceramic enterprises put forward that "they will never be afraid of imitation and will never be surpassed", this is actually not a heroic slogan, but a forced self-encouragement. The transition and renewal of this new product directly caused a lot of waste of consumables such as design, screen, film, mold and cloth system, which seriously increased the cost of new product development and finally increased the burden on consumers.

Source: Taocheng Daily