Claims

The kiln is 60 meters long and fires approximately 24,000 bricks at a time.

The firing temperature and method vary depending on the color and shape of the bricks being produced.

Fired bricks are cooled and unloaded from carts before being prepared for shipment.

All bricks are fired for approximately two days total in the kiln.

The completed bricks are bundled together and wrapped to prevent collapse during transportation.

Bricks are visually inspected for major chips or cracks as part of the final quality control before shipment.

Bricks are dried for 7 to 10 days in a drying room using residual heat from the kiln on the ground floor, with entrance temperature around 40°C and high humidity, and exit temperature around 80°C with lower humidity.

Removed cracked or chipped bricks are reused in the production process rather than discarded.

The factory sources Mikawa clay from two different excavation sites and blends them together to stabilize the quality of the final product.

Carts in the kiln move at 2 cm per minute during the firing process.

The clay is crushed through a two-stage process: first through a smaller roller to refine the clay, then through a larger roller in the second crusher to crush the clay into finer particles.

Kneading the clay ensures uniform composition, moisture content, and particle size before extrusion.

In the vacuum pugmill, air is removed from the clay, and the clay is extruded from a narrowing exit to be molded into shape.

The thickness of bricks is adjusted by changing the width of the wire used in the cutting machine.

Brick size is determined by accounting for shrinkage during drying and firing, so the wet clay is cut larger than the final desired brick dimensions.

Irregularly shaped ends produced during cutting are sent back to the pugmill for reuse rather than discarded.

Moisture loss during the drying process results in a weight difference of 500g per brick between before and after drying.

Cracked or chipped bricks are removed from the production line before firing to ensure only quality bricks are fired.

Skilled craftsmen manually stack bricks by hand to ensure even heat distribution during firing.

The kiln is ignited by adjusting gas, and heat is applied from both sides, with heat rising from the bottom of the bricks.

The maximum temperature when firing red bricks is 1120°C.

Bricks use natural materials, making it very difficult to achieve the desired color in production.

When Slant 3D received the Joint Locker baseline design from Another Room, it established quality control standards requiring the product to be perfect every time with no misplaced features, skewed layers, or protruding layer lines—creating an extremely challenging and unforgiving mass-production requirement.

Tons uses 3D printing for bicycle accessory stands because the grid pattern design cannot be economically manufactured via traditional processes—injection molding would require tooling costs that make a flat plastic slab the only viable alternative.

85% of shoes are currently produced in Asia and are multimaterial constructs (fabric, rubber, glue) that create manufacturing complexity; 3D printed footwear can potentially solve many issues with traditional shoe manufacturing.

Zellerfeld produces approximately 40 hours of printing time per shoe and maintains current lead times of 8-12 weeks for customer orders.

Slant 3D eliminated bottom-layer staining issues in the Joint Locker by creating an internal cavity that minimizes contact with the print bed, solving an early batch problem.

Lighters vary in size based on the manufacturer's molding process and whether they are full or empty, creating tolerance problems that required a solid hole approach to be abandoned in favor of grip fins that provide flexible compliance.

Tons uses standardized third-party wooden stakes of varying lengths as components across all their products, simplifying manufacturing while maintaining premium appearance and function.

3D printed on-demand manufacturing eliminates excess inventory burden while enabling scaling for demand surges, with less waste than traditional manufacturing.

Ecovative has a different process to make vegan meat and leather that consumes far fewer resources than the real thing, using vertical farms and growth chambers that mimic natural soil conditions.

ChopValue's manufacturing process involves sorting chopsticks on a shaker table, dipping them in water-based resin, roasting them at 200 degrees for five hours to kill germs, and using a hydraulic machine to compress them with hundreds of pounds of pressure to create uniform engineered tiles.

In vertical farms, mycelium is grown to form a large marshmallow-like structure called 'aerial mycelium' over about 10 days, and the largest chamber can produce up to 200,000 pounds of mycelium per year.

BioFossa processes avocado seeds into bioplastic resin that can be molded and cut into different shapes, offering an alternative to petroleum-based plastics.

To make algae foam flip-flops, researchers mix compounds created from algae oil using an industrial machine, pour the mixture into molds, apply heat, and the foam expands into the shape of a shoe in about 10 minutes.

Texfad's production process involves cutting banana stems into celery-shaped chunks, drying them, feeding them into an extractor, and then hand-drying the fibers until they feel like silky yarn that is as strong as rope.

Larger Mint plants will be almost entirely automated with only 3 people on the shop floor at any time running 24/7, keeping workers safe from exposure to toxic e-waste compounds through minimal human contact.

Pineapple crowns (tops) are shredded, mixed with recycled paper, and turned into sheets that are left to dry under the sun to create plates, and if these plates end up in soil and water, tiny seeds inside will blossom in a few days.

Ecovative's mycelium-based leather alternative called Milo has been used in clothing and handbags since 2018 when the company licensed its leather-making process to Bolt Threads.

Anna is working on a bag called the Balani that will take her about 8 hours to make using exactly 1,152 pop tabs.

Loop coffins are lined with a layer of moss sourced from a local farm that serves two functions: it helps decompose the body faster and is rich in biodiversity, giving humans the experience of becoming part of the cycle of life.

Companies that refused to diversify or reshore manufacturing back to North America during COVID are now severely disadvantaged, especially because Baby Boomer retirement is taking away skilled labor at the same time reshoring needs to happen at scale.

Manufacturing will co-locate with population centers in the future due to just-in-time manufacturing and 3D printing capabilities, reducing ton-freight-miles by over 95 percent and fundamentally changing distribution economics.

Manufacturing is the second leading sector in deglobalization because supply chains are so complicated and complex; the Chinese are now panicking about supply chains because their vaccine doesn't work so they can't avoid COVID lockdowns, and they have two back-to-back hyper-populist US presidents (Trump and Biden) pursuing decoupling policies.