INSTANT COLOR SERIES

Solutions for the ceramic industry
Pigments and Special Products is a business unit of the Performance Pigments and Colors division of Ferro. We develop, produce, and market our pigments, special glasses, glazes, and special coating materials. In the ceramic industry, we are worldfamous for our innovative, high-quality colouring products. Our most important goal is to maintain a high level of product quality and to maximize customer satisfaction. To ensure this, we emphasize dialogue and partnership with our customers, focusing on the challenges of their markets and on their suggestions and requirements, as well as on our mutual desire to protect the environment. As a result, we are always ready with the most creative and ambitious new products our customer need. On going research and development is the basis of the high quality of our stains, as we continually improve not only their composition, but also our production technology and test methods. Following the success of our InstantColor® Plus stains range, we wanted to further develop our range of dispersible glaze stains in the entire colour spectrum. The resulting development is our new, improved InstantColor® Plus stains range.

The newest solution: InstantColor® Plus

The solution developed with the latest technology and recommended for Earthenware, Stoneware, porcelain and chinaware.

Our daily life grows increasingly fast-paced with its mobile phones, e-mail, internet, and e-commerce. At every step, a new solution is required, tailored to suit an individual problem. Flexible and innovative product development makes it possible to fulfil these demands. Automation and rapid prototyping enable us to anticipate and meet your changing requirements with new products. For the ceramic industry, our answer is: Fast-firing combined with InstantColor® Plus. With the help of InstantColor® stains you save precious time, time spent traditionally in slurry preparation using a ball mill. All the stains in our InstantColor® Plus range consist of uniformly minute particles that are dissolved instantly. Practically all primary grains are smaller than 32 µm with no coarse agglomerates to grind for the slurry. Extremely fine grains mean far easier dispersibility, and for our customers this means no ball mills, much less production time, and much less waste. All this is offered in the complete colour spectrum. (And of course you can prepare InstantColor® Plus stains the traditional ball mill way if you wish.)

InstantColor® Plus: A complete colour spectrum to meet the most demanding requirements

Brilliant colours:
The 30 stains in this range exhibit the purity, intensity, and brilliance you want, in the complete colour spectrum.

Extremely fine, uniform particles:
99.9 % of InstantColor® grains (with exception of the inclusion pigments and the product 230 967, melba) are guaranteed to be smaller than 32 µm, making the ideal for modern sreenprinting applications and for roller printing (e.g. Rotocolor®).

Easy dispersibility:
Readily dispersed in standard slurries, InstantColor® offers safe, easy handling.

Environmental compatibility:
InstantColor® Plus stains are leadfree (with the exception of some sphenes) and so are particularly suitable for leadfree glazes. Even our sphenes contain so little lead that – even when adding 10 weight-% – the coloured glaze needs no hazards identification. Stains using cadmium to achieve brilliant reds and oranges encapsulate the colour crystals in zirconium silicate, creating inert inclusion pigments.

Optimum glaze compatibility: Even in opaque glazes, InstantColor® stains create uniform,defect-free surfaces, no matter what the firing conditions are (traditional or fast-firing).

Flexible production:
Not restricted by the need to fill big ball mills, producers can easily prepare small batches, and switch from one colour to another. Just-in-time production is a reality. No mills to clean, no colour contamination, and no waste.

Intermixability:
An infinite number of colours can be prepared using the InstantColor® Plus range of 30 shades. Colours can be easily adjusted right in the barrel.

Cost effectiveness:
With minimal waste, no capital investment, no mill cleanup time, less water to dispose of, and high efficiency intense colour, the InstantColor® Plus range is extremely cost-effective to use.

Proven quality:
All stains are tested in a fast-firing process at 1100 °C for 75 minutes and compared to an established standard. The stain is released only if the colour difference of CIELABsystem delta E is less than 1. InstantColor® grain size distribution, sieve residue, and dispersibility are checked. Cadmium inclusion pigments are further investigated to analyze their cadmium release rate. We are also ready to meet individual customer specifications, when requested. The detailed test conditions for all our products are specified in the corresponding data sheets, which we will gladly send to you on request.

Instant Color Plus catalog



Instant Color
Special solutions with high heat resistance developed for vitrified goods.

Extremely small granules in the same shape:
The granule size of the 99% of the Instantcolor paints is smaller than 32 µm (except for capsulised pigments and the 230 967 coded product).

Easy diffusion:
The Instantcolor Plus series developed for standard clay offers an opportunity for easy and safe process



Instant Color catalog



Inclusion Pigments
Ferro develop, produce, and market our pigments, special glasses, glazes, and special coating materials. In the ceramic industry, we are world famous for our innovative, high-quality colouring products. Particularly our inclusion pigments create shining red, brilliant orange, and intense yellow colour shades in ceramic bodies and glazes, improving the traditional spectrum of colours available to the ceramic world in a unique way. Our inclusion pigments are distinguished by their chemical and thermal stability. This ensures both a high level of production safety and excellent end-product profitability.

The inclusion principle – brilliant pigments are stabilized by encapsulation in chemically and thermally stable crystals. The colours of yellow, orange, and red inclusion pigments are achieved using well-known, colour intensive cadmium-sulfoselenide compounds. These possess very limited chemical and thermal stability, and so we encap-sulate them in practically inert, colourless zircon-silicate in a complex chemical synthesis process. As a result, our inclusion pigments compare chemically with pure zirconium silicate, yet demonstrate the optical properties of their embedded colour.

One of the advantages of our cadmium inclusion pigments is that only a very small amount of cadmium is required to achieve the desired colour. As little as 0.1 weight-% cadmium is sufficient to create strong colours. This is about one twentieth of the amount required to achieve the same colour in conventional cadmium glazes.

1000 times less cadmium released The cadmium solubility of inclusion pigment glazes is very low. ISO 6713-approved tests for cadmium release show that the cadmium released by inclusion pigment glazes can be a thousand times or more less than that of conventional free-cadmium glazes.

Inclusion pigments for glaze application

Application hints
With the help of our inclusion pigments, our customers can obtain bright yellow, orange, and red glazes and bodies for applications in the tableware, art ceramic, tile, and sanitary industries. Each inclusion pigment has been optimized for its specific application, both to assist in customer selection and to meet our quality requirements.

When colouring earthenware glazes we recommend that our customers use those inclusion pigments with a “0” as third digit of the product number. For applications in the stoneware and tableware industry we recommend those with a “9” as the third digit, as these pigments have been optimized for these particular applications. Quality and re-lease control testing have also of course been specifically designed for each application. Detailed test conditions for our products are specified in the corresponding data sheets, which we will gladly send you upon request.

For optimal results using our inclusion pigments, please read the following application hints, as these will lead to increased quality of your products.

- Inclusion pigments are intermiscible, as well as miscible with other zircon and brown stains. To increase the red value in brown shades, you can add inclusion pigments to successfully match your desired colour.

- Glaze systems containing lead, lime, zinc, boron, or zircon improve the colour development of inclusion pigments.

- Alkali-rich glazes reduce the colour intensity.

- To avoid mechanical destruction of inclusion pigments during glaze preparation, we recommend adding the stain when only 5 % of the total milling time remains.

- Using inclusion pigments in the InstantColor ® range will give you the most striking and intense shades available, along with all the advantages of stir-in (dispersible) stains.

- For the production of fashionable, natural-coloured earthenware and rustic designs, we recommend our very economical inclusion pigment 270 527.

- In the stoneware and tableware application, the remark-ble stability of our inclusion pigments is especially evi-dent in pastel shades.

- Inclusion pigments improve the refiring stability of shades that contain zircon-iron-red, particularly in case of partial exchange.

- Inclusion pigments demonstrate good firing stability even under reducing firing conditions.

Inclusion Pigments catalog - 1
Inclusion Pigments catalog - 2