Dale McCleskey on wed 25 feb 98
Dale McCleskey
02/25/98 07:44 AM
This post is only for those, like me, who are incurably cheap, and who
enjoy the engineering challenge of building rube-goldberg machines, but
thought I'd add it to the mix. I built myself an extruder that works quite
well (for my limited purposes) for 16 bucks and some scrap stuff.
The barrel of the extruder is a 20 inch piece of 4" PVC pipe with a glue-on
male threaded fitting at the bottom. Then I combined a female thread
fitting and a cap fitting for the bottom. Though I only extrude coils of
the same size, I did it with the thought of making different shapes by
getting different screw-on bottom pieces.I planned to use PVC for the
plunger, but they don't manufacture anything that fits snugly inside a
piece of 4", so what I did was used a 2' long piece of 2 1/2" PVC for the
plunger, with a cap glued on the end, then I cut a circle out of 1" wood,
and screwed that to the plunger.
To make the whole thing work, I built a sturdy box out of scrap 2" lumber.
The box is large enough to drop the extruder and plunger into, and will
hold the extruder while exerting the considerable pressure required to
extrude the clay. On the back side of the box I screwed a piece of scrap
plywood 3' X 6". I drilled the plywood with 1" holes every few inches.
Note, this whole thing has to be strongly built and screwed together. The
bottom of this box assembly has a hole for the extruded clay to come out,
but the hole is small enough (3" diameter) to provide a shoulder on which
the extruder assembly sits. Then the whole box assembly mounts solidly to
the wall, screwed, not nailed, to a stud.
When I use it, I put my clay in the barrel of the extruder, put in the
plunger, then use a piece of 3/4" pipe (actually, just a furniture clamp
with that size pipe--because it's there). I insert the pipe in the
appropriate hole in the plywood, and force the plunger down. As the plunger
goes down, I simply keep moving to lower holes.As I said, this extruder
works quite well, with the following aggravating problem. When I go to pull
the plunger back out, it is stubborn and annoying. I've thought of various
ways to cure that problem, but for the time being, this worketh.
Part of the game for me is knowing I did it myself. And part of the
motivation of this post may be to see if I could describe this in a way
that makes any sense. Like the owl said, whoooo nose.
If I were doing it again, I might shorten the original 20" barrel. I never
extrude anywhere near that much clay, probably 10" would do, but then
again, the longer barrel helps keep the plunger in line. I put in the male
and female threaded pieces, so I could take it apart, and in practice I
never do, so could save more money and just glue a cap on the end of the
barrel. It's so cheap, you could make as many barrels and caps with
different shapes for about $5 each. Or, you could go more conventional and
make flat dies that fit down in the end; ain't creativity wonderful?
Dale McCleskey
Mt.Juliet Tennessee (where we still haven't seen winter, but we're all
growing gills)
Robert Katz on sun 1 mar 98
I might suggest a light spray of WD40. It works well in my little extruder
( caulking gun ) And I have fired clay exposed to WD40 without any problems.
Vicki Katz
Katz Creek Pottery
Sugar Land, TX
At 10:15 AM 2/25/98 EST, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>
>
>
>
>
>Dale McCleskey
>02/25/98 07:44 AM
>
>This post is only for those, like me, who are incurably cheap, and who
>enjoy the engineering challenge of building rube-goldberg machines, but
>thought I'd add it to the mix. I built myself an extruder that works quite
>well (for my limited purposes) for 16 bucks and some scrap stuff.
>
>The barrel of the extruder is a 20 inch piece of 4" PVC pipe with a glue-on
>male threaded fitting at the bottom. Then I combined a female thread
>fitting and a cap fitting for the bottom. Though I only extrude coils of
>the same size, I did it with the thought of making different shapes by
>getting different screw-on bottom pieces.I planned to use PVC for the
>plunger, but they don't manufacture anything that fits snugly inside a
>piece of 4", so what I did was used a 2' long piece of 2 1/2" PVC for the
>plunger, with a cap glued on the end, then I cut a circle out of 1" wood,
>and screwed that to the plunger.
>
>To make the whole thing work, I built a sturdy box out of scrap 2" lumber.
>The box is large enough to drop the extruder and plunger into, and will
>hold the extruder while exerting the considerable pressure required to
>extrude the clay. On the back side of the box I screwed a piece of scrap
>plywood 3' X 6". I drilled the plywood with 1" holes every few inches.
>Note, this whole thing has to be strongly built and screwed together. The
>bottom of this box assembly has a hole for the extruded clay to come out,
>but the hole is small enough (3" diameter) to provide a shoulder on which
>the extruder assembly sits. Then the whole box assembly mounts solidly to
>the wall, screwed, not nailed, to a stud.
>
>When I use it, I put my clay in the barrel of the extruder, put in the
>plunger, then use a piece of 3/4" pipe (actually, just a furniture clamp
>with that size pipe--because it's there). I insert the pipe in the
>appropriate hole in the plywood, and force the plunger down. As the plunger
>goes down, I simply keep moving to lower holes.As I said, this extruder
>works quite well, with the following aggravating problem. When I go to pull
>the plunger back out, it is stubborn and annoying. I've thought of various
>ways to cure that problem, but for the time being, this worketh.
>
>Part of the game for me is knowing I did it myself. And part of the
>motivation of this post may be to see if I could describe this in a way
>that makes any sense. Like the owl said, whoooo nose.
>
>If I were doing it again, I might shorten the original 20" barrel. I never
>extrude anywhere near that much clay, probably 10" would do, but then
>again, the longer barrel helps keep the plunger in line. I put in the male
>and female threaded pieces, so I could take it apart, and in practice I
>never do, so could save more money and just glue a cap on the end of the
>barrel. It's so cheap, you could make as many barrels and caps with
>different shapes for about $5 each. Or, you could go more conventional and
>make flat dies that fit down in the end; ain't creativity wonderful?
>
>Dale McCleskey
>Mt.Juliet Tennessee (where we still haven't seen winter, but we're all
>growing gills)
>
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