Interesting Tidbit

[Jadnashua]

I've been watching 'How It's Made' lately on TV, and recently they had a thing on porcelain figurines. Most of this is applicable to the porcelain in your toilet as well. Typical porcelain shrinks 14% when it goes from the mold to when it comes out of the kiln. So, your toilet, sink, etc. started out considerably bigger than you ended up with. This has been mentioned before, but I'd not seen a number applied. This is for typical porcelain mixes that are quite wet and liquid. It has been said that Toto doesn't make their porcelain exactly the same as many (most?) others, and uses a dryer mix and injects the mold rather than pouring. I don't know for sure how any of them do it. The shrinkage is a function of how much moisture is in the clay mix and the quality of the item coming out of the mold depends on how much, how even, and how consistent that moisture content is. More moisture, shrinks more. Higher humidity when you pour, and the time required to get things solid before you pour out the excess could change how thick it is. So, I could envision a big advantage to injecting a controlled mix into a mold and not pouring it in, waiting, and pouring it out.

Anyway, thought this was interesting. I think this accounts for some of the variance in stuff, slightly different moisture, different clay mix, different sizes. Control that better, you get a more consistent product.

 

[Terry]

It was how consistent the product looked that first impressed me about Toto.
When the Eljer Titan first came out, I picked up five of them. When customers would come over, they could examine the Titan and the Drake.
It took about two years to sell five Titans, and in that same amount of time I was selling hundreds of the Drakes.
No comparison when you looked at them side to side, and upside down.
It is also the reason that the performance is consistent too. With some brands, I notice you can get a "good" one and a "bad" one.
That's why I laugh when I see some comments about, "Well........mine is good." Yeah, could be good, but try pulling more bowls and tanks and start looking at percentage of ones that "are" good.
"Good" pays my rent.........not so good doesn't .