Choosing the right Bricks for building your Pizza Oven

Why not build a pizza oven using pressed red bricks? We went full nerd on the question, building a test rig to show the effects thermal shock on different bricks.

Our custom Thermal Shock Test Rig is effectively a gas heated furnace with a series of pneumatic actuators, controlled by an Arduino Uno.

The idea is pretty simple, we know that it’s not actually high temperatures that cause pressed bricks to fail, it’s repeated cycles of thermal shock – rapid change in temperature from cold to extremely hot.