AAC Mould Handling & Precuring

After slurry is poured, the mould still has a long journey before it becomes a finished block — and how well that journey is engineered directly affects your production consistency and cycle time. Here's how mould handling and precuring work, and what to factor into your equipment planning.

The Mould Cycle at a Glance

Slurry Pouring → Mould Transfer → Precuring → Tilting → Cake Cutting → Empty Mould Cleaning & Oiling → Ready for Re-Pouring

After pouring, the filled mould moves to the precuring room via a ferry cart and mould transfer system, stays there until the green cake hardens enough to cut, then moves to the tilting station where it's tilted for wire cutting. Once the cake is removed, the empty mould is cleaned, oiled, and returned to pouring.

This can be built as manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic, depending on your capacity, budget, and automation goals.

How Moulds Actually Move: Automation Options

System
How It Moves
Best For
Manual
Moved by hand along rails
Smaller or lower-automation plants
Semi-Automatic
Dragging conveyor / assisted movement
Medium automation, balanced investment
Fully Automatic
Friction-wheel based, automated transfer
Higher-capacity, fully automated plants
Fully automatic systems reduce manual handling, synchronize better with the production cycle, and improve workplace safety — but semi-automatic and manual options remain valid where investment needs to stay lean.

The ferry cart — which shuttles moulds between pouring and precuring — is selected based on plant capacity, number of moulds in circulation, layout, required cycle time, automation level, and available manpower.

Precuring: Why Timing (and Temperature) Matters

The filled mould sits in the precuring room for roughly 2 to 3 hours, though actual time depends on raw material characteristics, slurry parameters, mix design, and temperature — it's not a fixed number for every plant. Proper precuring gives you:

Sufficient green cake hardness before cutting
Better dimensional stability and less cake deformation
More consistent cutting performance and a more predictable cycle
Temperature control matters year-round. Ambient weather swings affect slurry setting behavior, so a closed precuring room with controlled heating — using waste heat/steam from the autoclave via a heat exchanger to hold roughly 45°C — reduces weather dependency and keeps production consistent across seasons.

Tilting & Mould Preparation

Once the cake is hard enough, the mould moves to the tilting station, where it's tilted to position the cake for cutting — designed around your mould dimensions, cake size, and cutting line configuration. Like transfer systems, tilting can be manual, semi-automatic, or fully automatic.

After cake removal, the empty mould goes through: Cleaning → Oil Application → Inspection → Ready for Pouring. Mould oil reduces adhesion between the cake and mould surfaces for easier demoulding — inconsistent cleaning or oiling shortens mould life and hurts cake release.