Project Experience: Ceramic Sinks in Hotels

A building contractor working on renovation on a large hotel in New York City encountered repeat installation failures of ceramic sinks produced by a major bahtroom fixtures provider. Numerous ceramic sinks were fracturing in an unexpected very similar way during the installation or very shortly after. The contractor wanted to find out if the problem is related to the poor installation procedure or was due to a defective product. The analysis performed by EMSL (light microscopy, SEM/EDX, XRD analysis, ink testing) determined that all the sinks have the same type of defect at the same location, pinpointing to manufacturing defect acquired at slip casting stage.