Ron Collins on wed 24 jan 01
This works best for me: I use a three sided draftsman type plastic 1" on
all sides ruler....I lay the two cones on the canvas covered board, and put
the rules in there and snap...it's the best way I've found to keep from
breaking, but of course, you lose some, and have to buy more cones
sooner...I think they could have come up with a better mold somehow...why
don't you go into the cone business? They need competition, then they would
change their mold..
Frederich, Tim on thu 25 jan 01
Ron,
The cones are not made in a mold. They are formed on presses using about
16-20 tons of pressure. They are pressed from almost dry ( 9 percent
moisture) powder. The punches and dies are replaced on a daily basis and our
own machine shop redoes the tooling. These are just a couple of the
variables that we encounter when producing cones.
Bill Jones (Pottery Making Illustrated) and I are working on a future
article to document the production of cones and the quality control.
There are other cone companies in the world. Most do not produce the variety
of cone types and the range that we do. They also cannot produce the quanity
of cones that we do (30+ million per year). These companies are not
registered with the National Bureau of Standards and do not have the
accuracy or quality control of Orton cones.
If we separate the cones they do not ship as well. Remember that these are
not an already fired product and UPS can be very hard on them. We are
always looking for a better way to ship and serve our customer without
the cost of cones increasing beyond the norm.
Best regards,
Tim Frederich
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