Building Materials Manufacturing

Building material products are generally broken down into functional categories, such as:

• Plasters: Finishing materials applied to walls and ceilings to create smooth, protective or decorative surfaces, and commonly made from gypsum, lime or cement.
• Adhesives: Bonding agents used to join materials together, ranging from construction glues to specialty bonding compounds for tiles, wood, metals and plastics.
• Mortars: Mixtures of cement, lime, sand and water used to bind masonry units like bricks, blocks and stones, providing structural stability and load transfer.
• Sealants: Flexible compounds made from silicone, polyurethane, acrylic and similar materials used to fill gaps and joints, preventing the passage of air, water, moisture or contaminants
• Cements and grouts: Hydraulic binders (cement) used for structural construction and grouts used to fill voids, anchor bolts or finish tile joints. Both harden through chemical hydration.
• Fibrous materials: Materials reinforced with fibers (natural or synthetic) to improve tensile strength, insulation or fire resistance. Examples include fiberglass, mineral wool and fiber-reinforced composites.
• Composites: Engineered materials made by combining two or more distinct components (e.g., fibers + resin) to achieve superior strength, durability or lightweight performance.
• Coatings: Protective or decorative surface layers applied as liquids or sprays, such as paints, varnishes, waterproof coatings and corrosion-resistant finishes.
• General compounds: Miscellaneous formulated materials used for patching, leveling, filling or finishing surfaces, such as joint compounds, fillers and repair pastes.

Virtually all types of mixing systems are used across the range of building materials and their upstream ingredients. In fact, some products are made using multiple mixing technologies in succession. By volume, here are the most common mixer types and their products:

• High-shear mixers: Used for fast hydration of powder and liquid ingredients, such as for liquid grouts, sealants and flowable compounds. 
• Ribbon blenders: Used for uniform blending of dry powders and granulars, such as with dry mortar, plaster and insulation mixes. 
• Ploughshare® mixers: Used for very fast, extremely accurate, intensive mixing of powders, fibers, additives and synthetic compounds (both dry and liquid) for mortar, plaster, composite, sealant, adhesive and fibrous products. 
• Planetary mixers: Used for lower-intensity mixing and dispersion, often with high-viscosity products such as heavy glues, sealants, coatings and filler compounds. 

Building materials are used in highly regulated construction and engineering environments, which in turn makes the manufacturing of such materials even more critical. Lodige has direct experience designing, installing and commissioning mixing systems that either comply with, or produce products that comply with, governing regulations such as:

• ASTM (American Society for Testing and Materials)
• ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) 
• ICC (International Code Council)
• UL (Underwriter’s Laboratory)
• ANSI (American National Standards Institute)
• ISO (International Organization for Standardization)
• IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)
• CE / EN (Conformité Européenne, or European Technical Conformance)
• OSHA (U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration)
• Multiple additional regional and industry-specific standards

While every application that we work on is unique, we tend to solve the following challenges experienced by our building material customers most often:

• Low on-spec rates
• Long mix times
• Inconsistent quality
• Slow machine turnaround times
• Bottlenecked capacity
• Incomplete mixing

More and more international entities are pressing for environmental protection and sustainability to be integrated into construction markets, now reaching far upstream into the building material products supply chain as well. Lodige mixers offer several benefits that speak directly to these sustainability demands, including:

• Waste reduction: Lodige mixers have industry-leading batch consistency and on-spec performance, reducing rework and rejected product waste streams. 
• Energy conservation: Lodige patented mixing technologies are highly efficient, utilizing compound mechanical mixing actions that consume less energy.
• Pollutant reduction: In addition to reducing pollution via low energy demands, Lodige mix systems offer many additional benefits such as volatile vapor recovery options and optimized cleaning cycles (minimizing water and chemical waste).