Ceramic, porcelain, quartz and sintered stone. What do all of these materials have in common? They are man-made stones.
Start with minerals, bonding agents and some added heat. That's the common process to produce these materials.
Imagine a pressure cooker, just for chemists.
Here’s the general view on how these solid surfaces are made.
"Clay + heat" , you get ceramic.
"Kaolin + heat" , you get porcelain.
"Quartz powder + minerals + glass + bonding agent + pressure + heat", you get quartz.
"Quartz powder + minerals + bonding agent + pressure + heat + digital printing", you get sintered stone.
Of course as technology improves, different man made materials are introduced to the market.
Ceramic is a term used in engineering. To create ceramics, you start with raw materials, bonding agents, heat, and pressure. Once ceramics have cooled and hardened, they cannot be recycled, unlike metals.
Just as you can't unboil an egg to separate the yolk and white.
Ceramic / Sintered Stone exist to replace natural stone. Beauty is unmatched to nature. But with high resolution digital printing, nature marble patterns can be recreated.
Inner cracks, crystals, impurities, porousness, a tendency to stain, and a lack of scratch resistance. These are the flaws on natural stone. However, man-made stones have none of these.
