liambesaw
-
Posts
3,953 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Posts posted by liambesaw
-
-
1 minute ago, LeeU said:
My workbench today has a thrown and altered bowl form, then hand-worked with stamped, paddled, & incised techniques. I like how much work actually goes into making something look "other-than" a properly, nicely, thrown bowl.
Isn't that great though? Throw a beautiful form and then slap it around a bit to make it interesting. I've recently gotten into paddling my forms on the wheel. Takes some getting used to but it's a lot of fun! I'm amazed at how hard I can whack a nice tall cylinder and still be able to shape it a bit afterward!
As far as going electric, I have wanted an electric kiln for a very long time. Gas firing looks very nice and being able to reduce glazes and body is nice too, but it is expensive for me and requires my full attention for an entire day. It's tiring and I've got a 5 and 7 year old running around, so I am just glad I have one less thing to worry about.
-
Very nice, almost bone-like. Was the pinholing from high loi? When I put my glazes into insight I know that the loi figures are a rough guess, but I try to keep mine low by subbing out whiting and fiddling.
-
Is the Ray's cream just the creamy part or is it breaking blue like that
-
Got a glaze firing in, was able to fit 40 mugs. This is a representative sample! So happy to finally have an electric kiln working!
This week I have a bunch of candles I'm working on, gonna be great! Right now I have a bunch of lidded containers bisquing, big stuff I have to fire alone, can't really pack it too tight. Y'all that grew up on electric have no idea how easy youve got it!!!
- GEP, Bill Kielb, dhPotter and 7 others
-
10
-
-
It's funny, this thread inspired me to contact shimpo about my drifting pedal, looks like it's a simple fix wahoo! I'm skeptical of course, the thing is 50 years old, but hey it's worth a shot! I got a copy of the rk-2 price and stock list and they have quite a few important parts completely discontinued now so looks like when this thing dies I'll be in the market for a fancy dc motor one.
-
23 minutes ago, hitchmss said:
@liambesaw Not sure what you mean by DC motor? Runs off of alternating 110 current.
I know I also need to flip the wheel over and lubricate the main bearings; Ive got a nice "....squeek....squeek....squeek..." at low speeds. Sounds like a small bird in my wheel....highly annoying.
Yeah I just looked, permenant magnet DC motors. Don't know if they're brushed or brushless, the literature doesn't say.
-
9 minutes ago, hitchmss said:
I have a early 2000's pacifica gt 800; variable speeds and torque are my two big criteria; followed by smoothness at low speeds/change from speed-speed, lastly by quietness. I have a reversible option on my wheel, but very, very very rarely use it; Im right hand dominant so I guess that's not a big one for me.
The vast majority of pots that have been thrown on this wheel are under 5# which it handles relatively well; my belts are getting worn, so if I hog down on 3# I can feel them slipping, but with new belts it handled centering 30#+ with no real issues. I dont know if its the number of miles on my wheel or what, but at low speeds I am starting to notice a little choppiness in my wheel speed when changing from one RPM to another. Could just need a tune up.
Is that a DC motor one? I use a small DC handpiece at work and it gets choppy at low speeds when it needs new brushes. Very cheap fix if that's what it is
-
For me it's probably torque and speed control. I use a vintage shimpo rk-2, the ring-cone drive is very torquey, the one gripe I have is that I can't take my foot off and maintain speed. If I take my foot off it either goes to full speed or to zero. Another thing I like, but isn't quite as important is that in neutral it spins freely like a banding wheel. Makes on-wheel alterations very easy.
-
This week I'll be throwing 3lb bowls, 1 lb bowls and candle holders. Did my 3lb bowls last night, tonight will be 1lb bowls. I also have a full kiln full of freshly bisqued mugs, will glaze, decorate and fire those this weekend! I have enough stuff to bisque, so much actually, I should really start doing daily firings til I'm caught up, would save from having to dance around all this greenware.
-
3 hours ago, GEP said:
So how do you feel about the $780 electrician’s quote now, after seeing how much work and expertise was involved?
That I should have gone to electrician school. I actually did the $1250+tax quoted work, saved myself 800 dollars. Crawling in my crawlspace was a pain in the butt but definitely not worth 800.
If I had done the short run I originally planned on, it would have been CAKE!
I'm just glad to see glowing red coils, can't wait to open the kiln and see whats inside!
-
3 minutes ago, Bill Kielb said:
Nice work! Congratulations.
Haha, 80% of the work goes to you and the other helpful people around here. I'm just so grateful for all of the wonderful folks that make this website into a community.
-
2 hours ago, Bill Kielb said:
Alright we have waited long enough, time to brag about your first firing.
Haha, I'm bisquing a full load of mugs as we speak. It's 18x23 and I think I've got around 60 mugs in there. I need to get a couple new shelves for it, the ones that came with it were well beaten with lowfire glaze and cracked/broken, and the shelves from my old kiln are too small. No big deal, the shelves for this one are 40 bucks a piece.
Other than that, the elements seem to be fine so far. The bottom element is out of it's channel, and seems too small, I pinned it as best I could but it won. New elements are on my list but will have to wait a bit, 200 bucks for a complete replace.
The good news is, it's getting hot and anything else that comes up will be a whole lot easier to handle than crawling in my crawlspace and running wire.
- Rae Reich, shawnhar and Bill Kielb
-
3
-
Definitely on a concrete floor!
-
1 minute ago, jbruce said:
WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!!
- running a kiln in an enclosed space is extremely dangerous. some fumes are noxious. please dont.
- running a kiln within 8 feet of anything flammable is extremely dangerous. please dont.
WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!! WARNING !!!
8 feet eh, I dont think my kiln would fit anywhere on my property haha, my plate says 10 inches from flammables, that's kinda like 8 feet!
-
Wow that looks scary, haha
-
Also depending on when they were made, might be nice to test them to make sure theyre safe
-
30 minutes ago, Rae Reich said:
If you haven't pulled yourself along by your elbows lately, be prepared to awaken some muscle groups!
Yes, I'm very sore... Mostly shoulders and knees. The knees are all bruised up from crawling, didnt think to get some knee pads til I was far too gone for it to matter. My wife is already tired of hearing my groaning haha
-
1 hour ago, Hulk said:
Aaah, memories! Our first home had a low crawlspace - get between joists to roll from front to back.
The word "swell" reminds me - suggest long shirtsleeves and pants, both secured with rubber bands (plural), and pants tucked in socks, collar fully buttoned up, and look look look before entering. I find both black widows an' fiddlers (brown recluse) in the oddest places, e.g. in the garage/studio, right where I'd put my hand; tucked up in the garbage can hand hold; outside the front door, between knee and forehead level.
Full body tyvek coveralls with a hood, respirator and goggles. We don't really have dangerous spiders where I live, more likely to find a coyote or bear under there than a black widow
- hitchmss and Bill Kielb
-
2
-
Running conduit under the house today, WHAT A CHORE. 24 inches of clearance and I'm a big 220lb 6'2" monster so not a whole lot of room to work. Hopefully this pays off in the next few weeks and I'll be firing an electric kiln!!!
Wire arrives via UPS sometime next week and I can run the wire and call the inspector if everything goes swell. Fingers crossed I did everything OK, it looks good anyway.
-
I'm glad you came here to collaborate, this is a great place do it! As you know, one of the main reasons developers choose to make their software open source is to draw on the knowledge and abilities of a community to make the project better, the same can be said of the hardware in this case. I'm excited that this has the potential to turn my manual old 75 dollar kiln into something I can control as well as a newer 2500 dollar kiln. I'll be doing this project eventually and without you coming here, sharing, and being humble and open to criticism, it just wouldn't happen. So thank you! And thank you to everyone else who has contributed here!
-
2 minutes ago, Bill Kielb said:
Most of the curves I have viewed show 1.8C/W cooling works fine. Ambient air at 80-90 degrees means a 4” X 4” X 1-1/2” parallel fin exchanger is likely fine. Powered cooling is a solution to shrink the form factor but also relies on another mechanical device. Doing it with convection if reasonable is probably most dependable.
Active probably better if it's contained in a kit box right? I'm trying to think of ways to not have a hot heat sink inside of a kit box, it might affect the efficiency of the heatsink.
Just tossing out ideas at the moment
-
One point I saw when looking at SSR paperwork is that they require active cooling if run at 30 amps or higher, maybe a cpu cooler would be a cheap option, I used those with some high wattage cob LED units a while back and they worked great. Seems the SSRs have similar cooling requirements as a cpu. Can also be powered via the rpis USB hub
-
Only thing i can think of, is that with 3 separate insulated strands, that's 3 points of failure per connection. What if one wire has some broken strands and higher resistance? I'm attaching the NEC wire ampacity chart for your future reference.
Also in this case, #6 copper wire is cheaper than cannibalizing an extension cord,
What’s on your workbench?
in Aesthetic Approaches and Philosophy
Posted
Well I'm all out of space again, so more firings this weekend! Have a bisque load ready and then I'll have to do a few glaze firings. If I keep it up at this rate I'll have enough to do a farmers market or whatnot in no time