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Dear colleagues, I have to make a decision as I could have a Venco Super Twin in a few days here in my studio what would normally take months to be delivered and I have a big order of lots of plates to throw. In my research about pugmills I have come as far as that I think I have to decide between buying a Peter Pugger vpmss20 and a Venco Super Twin, both stainless steel and de-airing. I throw porcelain and run a studio production, means around 2 tons a year, getting more (sorry, I'm not a native speaker)... I'll need it in the first place for replacing the wedging of new porcelain clay as I find this extremely power- and timeconsuming for production. I let the wet material dry a little bit down to have a stiffer clay for throwing thin bigger pots. That means the clay has stiffer parts outside from the drying and softer ones inside even if I dry it slowly under a soft fabric to avoid too fast drying. I hope such a machine could mix and de-air it for having a homogen porcelain body ready for throwing. That's what I intend mainly. To reclaim crap is also an idea but not really important as I can sell trimming crap for a small money to someone who re-uses it for small sculptures. i know in stoneware de-aired clay is a gorgeous thing for throwing, but porcelain is different and it seems to absorb air whenever possible so the vacuum effect might be a problem? What I have heard about the Peter Puggers: Some potters have problems with porcelain coming out with no plasticity. Also heard a rumour that the pugging chamber of the PP is too short for good de-airing. The advantage of PP seems to be that the clay can be stiffened or dried down easily and that any stiffness doesn't seem to be a problem at all as the mill is very strong so it won't stop with stiffer clay. About the Venco: the twin spiral shall have a quite well mixing effect but the de-airing pump shall also not be so good. Another disadvantage of the Venco is that I heard it stands still if the clay is too stiff and you have to open it to pull the clay out before going on with softer clay. I'm afraid I will have spent so much money to have small air bubbles in my fired ware what must be quite horrifying and / or that I have a machine that stops when i put a bit stiffer clay for bigger pots into it. It would be SO GREAT if anyone working with porcelain with these machines could share his/her experiences... thanks so much, claude

After several months of searching , I located a used Venco 3" pugmill. Haven't picked it up yet but it was left full of clay. I want to clean it out rather than cross contaminate a bunch of clay but my first cousin Murphy tells me I'll probably mess up the gaskets in the process. I want to have new gaskets on hand before I open it up. Venco says you can use two layers of "electrical tape" for a gasket but they don't spec which electrical tape. I'm sure 3M makes at least a hundred types of electrical tape. My question is, what do you use or do you buy factory spares? Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance. .