Weight tolerances

Weight tolerances of porcelain bodies

The normal, intended use of porcelain is generally independent of the weight of a piece of tableware. The waiter would like a plate "as light as possible", the guest "as temperature-maintaining as possible", the buyer "as cheap as possible" and the owner "as durable as possible". It is not easy to meet this variety of requirements. Genuine hard porcelain (without additives) has a high density and thus a high dead weight (temperature stability).

Several tolerance factors are responsible for considerable differences in the weight of a tableware item of one and the same type and can vary greatly depending on the type of production (casting, turning, pressing) and the production method (semi-automatic or fully automatic production). Weight tolerances are therefore among the usual, design-related shrinkage tolerances of ceramic products. Wall thickness tolerances are usually responsible for the weight tolerances.

Hollow parts are more likely to be affected than flat parts, castings more likely to be pressed articles, and manually produced tableware more likely to be fully machined porcelain. The production batch also influences the weight, as the raw materials (kaolin/feldspar/quartz) are not always of the same consistency. We are not able to formulate an exact deviation rule from this.