Mosaic Tiles: Redefining the process of manufacturing
Producing the small mosaic pieces is like opening the door for artistic imagination as creating an eye-catching mosaic tile design is an art, and putting it in your house takes immense effort to make it look stunning.
I have worked in the stone industry for few decades overseeing production for international exports ensuring to keep the production cost low and steer the company towards a profitable business. Reducing manufacturing costs has many dimensions, and one of them is putting stone waste into use and practically producing no waste at all.
Wait, WHAT !!
But how can you not have any waste at all? What if someone just dropped a big sheet of granite, and had cracks all over?
Yes, it happens!! More often than you think, and mostly when it is critical for it to not happen.
Mosaic Manufacturing is an independent process on its own and not just putting the broken waste into use. But I can certainly say that it is one of the ways I have put those beautiful tiny blocks to great use.
As I said in the beginning, creating an eye-catching mosaic tile design is an art, because it is not just putting blocks in the random order ( though you indeed have seen random pieces of mosaic tiles ), but to create a pattern tile that when put together on the floor or walls takes the beauty of the room at another level.
“The design looks fantastic and cheeky”, said Nancy Epestin (CEO of Artistic Tile) for one of my mosaic pattern tile designs (image below), that won the grand prize for “Penny-Lane: Your way” challenge organized by Artistic Tile.
What is Penny Lane? Sounds like putting pennies in a lane.
You are right!!, a circular mosaic is just as big as a penny that is organized to make a repeated patterned tile, that can go on the wall, the floor, or possibly in your arched doorway.
Can you still reduce the production cost while speeding up the production with zero error?
The short answer is YES. But before I explain my new design that would help speed up the production without any error, let’s take a look at the current mosaic assembly process. If I just talk about the Penny Lane circular mosaic, that would require
- Cutting 20 mm round x 10 mm thick stone pieces from a big tile or granite slabs using Water-Jet cutting machine or core drill machines.
- Placing these round pcs on the nylon wire mesh with the aid of adhesive.
Manual Assembly: The workers are given the pile of mosaic pieces and either they put it randomly on the nylon wire mesh or if making a pattern tile, need to know what color goes where. The Manual assembly is cost-effective, as tens or hundreds of people can do it simultaneously, no equipment investment is needed worth hundreds or thousands of dollars, and the error rate is very low.
Robotic Assembly: The robotic machine puts colored items piece by piece at a designated place that can work tirelessly, with zero error (given supply is uninterrupted), but requires a lot of investment, maintenance, repairs, and might not be practical for a market where the profit margin is very low.
So, when I said YES, I meant to create a way that would take advantage of the human workforce and produce patterned tiles with the accuracy of a machine. A process that guides the worker and eliminates the guesswork. A process that is template-based and can be followed without training or building muscle memory to remember what colored piece goes where on the tile.
Here is one of my patterned tile designs, based on the idea that I am going to present in the next section shows how quickly a new pattern tile idea can be conceived that is not only easy to visualize but also makes the production process extremely efficient.
The Template-based approach ( Patent Pending )
I designed and 3D printed the modular tile assembly template that can be configured and reused for endless possibilities of mosaic tiles pattern, but for this article; I would demonstrate the circular penny mosaic tiles.
This concept takes the guesswork out of the equation and can be used in an assembly line where each type/color of the stone can be assembled by one set of team and the tile can be sent forward to the next step of the assembly line to complete it with other colored mosaics. Let’s take a look !!
- The Base Panel: Panel that holds blocking pieces that are arranged based on the tile design, and acts as a guided template to be used in the assembly line for error-free organizing and assembly.
- The Blocking pieces:
— The screw-in blocking pieces for the base panel: has a 10 mm depth that prevents circular mosaic pieces to go in when the tile panel is placed over it.
— The coverup blocking pieces for the tile panel: block a single slot (or entire row ) on the tile panel that wouldn’t be used at all in the patterned tile design.
- The Tile Panel: 10 mm depth, and 1 mm base collar to prevent penny mosaic from falling ( depth also ensures the quality of tile to quickly identify pieces with odd height). The tile panel is placed over the base panel.
As shown in the Base Panel, a template of the tile has been created, by fixing and tightening the blocking pieces in the desired pattern. Now this template is ready to be used to start assembling the tile.
Starting with an affixed patterned base panel at the bottom, place the tile panel right at the top of it. The entire tile panel fits right over the base panel.
Once placed, the blocked slots restrict the placement of mosaics and allow only the right colored pieces to go in.
For a patterned penny tile that has various colors, few different base panels can be designed by putting blocking pieces at needed spots. In the assembly line; the tile panel can be :
- placed,
- filled in,
- and lifted
from one base panel to another blocked base panel for different colored mosaics.
What could be better than Pennies to show the Pany-Lane mosaic tile design?
Here are my 2 cents ( no wait, that’s 104 cents).
The picture above shows the tile panel that has just been filled in and lifted from the base panel. If the tile has only two colors, no other base panel is required and second colored mosaics can be dropped right into empty slots.
( The pennies don’t have the depth but actual mosaics used in tiles are 10 mm thick and once placed, wouldn’t allow other pieces to be accidentally placed over existing ones)
Once all spots are filled in, a glued nylon wire mesh would be applied at the top and the entire tile panel would be turned upside down for the designed tile to get dried and packaged. Now the tile panel can be reused for assembling another tile.
