Brick Making

Green Home Building: Natural Building Techniques: Adobe

I see your Adobe & raise you a

Compressed Earth Block

Next step up/down: Straw Bale Construction

So, assuming a 10 hour work day (just to get some perspective), that would be about 13 to 6 bricks per minute. (And a lot of drying space--do you plan to dry them with an oven or "in the sun"?)

I've never made bricks--can you just shovel the proper mixture of clay, sand (?), binder, and water into a mold and immediately lift the mold off (assuming the mold is open top and bottom)?

If so, I can almost see this being a manual operation for a small group of people, maybe with a concrete mixer to mix the ingredients--shovel the mixture into a multibrick (16 brick?) mold, compress / level the clay with a board pressed down on top, lift the mold off, set it down for the next set of bricks (on something like a piece of wood so the bricks can be carried out of the way.

If you want to automate it more, I'd sure like to mold the bricks on a conveyor belt, long enough to hold a full days production. But, then, the next day (or on the evening shift), the conveyor has to be unloaded for the next day's production. 10,000 bricks would require a fairly long conveyor.

What is the scope of work? I think it will be very difficult to accomplish very much with $2500 in machinery. Maybe if the $2500 is simply for some machine that mixes the material, puts it in a mold, compresses it (how much), and then opens the mold and leaves it on the ground or something, you might do something for $2500.

But then you are faced with moving that brick out of the way for the next one without breaking it. The long conveyor I mention will almost certainly break the $2500 budget, even if it would be something hand cranked (or driven by oxen or whatever).

And, if you need an oven to bake the bricks...

(I am assuming some sort of third world country where prices of all sorts are lower than in the US, and that junk piles are available.)

the guys at the brick factory are laughing right now..

Bricks cost so much money because of the expense in creating them.

just the fuel to bake 10,000 of them would pretty well eat up your budget, and that's without the factory..

...There's no such thing as a free mason don't cha know.

THERE IS AN AFRICAN BRICK MACHINE Co. ON-LINE IN EC21global marketplace.

with all the China ones.

Magma.com had something

Also Patent.com has some listings you might look into.

Used equipment on yellowise.com did not specify bricks.

well the best I can do is this machine might be a bit slow for what you want Unless of course you want to make 500 of them & employ the poeple to operate

It needs a little repair but you can afford it on your budget

but seriously plants I have seen many yrs ago they had steel plates rolling on a set of rollers fed from a conveyor belt as each plate in turn was pushed under a machine that made the brick on the plate pressed it & vibrated it & then withdrew & left it on the plate to be pushed further down the rollers & stacked by hand but the air rams & control solenoids would be worth more than your budget let alone the steel to manufacture the machine & the control gear & motors to drive everything

He hasn't stated if it is a cement based or a clay based brick

the plants I worked on were cement bricks so no kiln needed

Are you thinking about making bricks in the US or in Africa?

If Africa which country?

You need a brick extruder to get that kind of output. This is a machine that extrudes a continuous slab of brick material, then cuts it into individual bricks. Years ago I responded to an Innocentive challenge to redesign an existing type of brick extruder to make it more compact (transportable in a single unit). My design was not accepted, but I still have all the original design info - mine and the existing unit on which mine was based. Email me at piolenc@gmail.com if you're interested in having that.

Something I wondered about at the time: how the heck do you provide the KILN capacity for that size of plant? It's all well and good to extrude, slice and sun-dry the bricks; they still need to be fired. I never did find out.

You need a wheel with the brick moulds attached, this is mounted on a chassis with wheels, at the back would be a trough to hold the clay mixture,as the brick moulds reach the top the mixture is pushed into the mould (this will have to be by hand as,1 it needs to fill the mould completely & 2 your budget won't allow for auto feed) the wheel with the moulds need to have a cover that stops the brick dropping out until it reaches the ground, the machine will need to be pulled along the rows dropping bricks then turned & pulled down the next row ect.

Bazzer

OK (I scanned most of the current replies) Make a tray- 2' flat steel welded (on edge) in the appropriate rectangular shape(s). Make it only as large as the heaviest weight that can be easily transported to the next station (for drying). Material mixers should be able to pour their mix into this array of rectangles... excess is scraped off & recycled. Use flat bed carts to move to next station. After material is transferred to drying bed the steeel frame/mold is lifted away from the brick material. (pre-lube the mold/make it slippery) Receiving stations might have solar heated water piped in & direct sunlight to speed curing. Lots of details missing but thats the general idea. Good luck. Carlos

Once you actually decide on a design and build your brick making machine I'm positive the forum would love to see a couple of pictures of the finished product. Best of luck.

The numbers here don't add up.

Assuming a typical New Mexico sized adobe brick which is 4" high x 10" thick x 14" long, and weighs 30lbs. This guy wants to make enough bricks per day to build a 9' high wall 400' long, weighing in at 13.5tons (excluding the mortar courses).

If he makes every day and it typically takes about ten days for the bricks to dry in the sun, (he is a bit short on budget for a kiln) he needs a drying area of 100x150yards just to dry the bricks.

He is using 7tones of sand, 5tones of clay, and 35 bails of straw every day.

Given the length of time he has to make each brick, he needs either a mobile plant and a mechanised means to move this quantity of raw materials, or a fixed plant (easier because of the water supply) and a mechanised means to move the bricks to the drying area.

We discuss engineering on CR4, not miracles

I hear you.. but I guess you've never seen them making mud bricks in Chad. Trust me when I say, Western style engineering and methods do not apply!!

Since when do the numbers have to add up?

Totally impractical ideas have been presented here many times before. Most get a chilly reception, if they have no merit.

That's a ton o bricks. I like your answer.

Acquire mid size log splitter. About $700 worth. Weld up a box with an open end that the ram of the splitter can press into, a hinged lid to load a quantity of raw brick material and a rectangular exit hole. Extrude a line of continuous brick and slice or control the extrusion and slice each brick as it extrudes (probably less distortion of the brick), kind of like making corn curls. The rest of the money can be used to fire the first load and the profits from the first load can fund future firings and purchase of more splitters.