How Are Bricks Made?
Photo: Millions of bricks are made every day! Photo by courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and US Department of Energy (DOE). Brickworks (brickmaking plants) are typically built in places where there are large supplies of clay available nearby. The first stage in making bricks involves digging the clay from pits in the ground. Raw clay isn’t immediately usable as it is: rocks and other impurities have to be removed first by screening and filtering. The clay is then mixed with water and kneaded in machines that resemble giant traditional food mixers or modern breadmaking machines. The now-soft clay mixture is squeezed out through a rectangular-shaped hole (imagine toothpaste squeezing from a tube with a square-shaped hole) in a process called extrusion. Wires cut the lengths of clay into separate bricks, which are then stacked up on trucks and moved into drying rooms where the moisture they contain is allowed to evaporate over a period of about a day or so. Once that process is co
The first building materials used by man were wood and stone. But the use of bricks followed soon afterwards, even before written history, and today bricks remain one of man’s most important building materials. What is this vital building material made from? Simple earth! Many forces — such as weather, glaciers, volcanoes, and c
The most common way of making bricks is to add water to the clay, shape the material using a mould and then harden the shape using heat. Depending on the type of brick and its manufacturing process, it can be shaped using a highly automated machine, or one at a time by hand. Some bricks are hardened using a kiln and some are left to dry in the hot sun.
