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Bailey System 3 Power Drive extruder


Stephen

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I've posted b4 on my effort to try and speed up art tile production. Has anybody used the the Bailey System 3 air powered extruder? I am thinking of buying it  with a 4x6 barrel and the 6-14" tile extender? The manual one with the add-on's would be around $600 and the air powered around $1400. Making hundreds of field tiles in a session (or trying to if I can get the right setup). Only getting about 20 tiles an hour with a slab roller and/or air release. Would like to get that substantially up and this seems like it might do the trick. 

For art tile it is important that the tiles always be the same thickness every time and the dial in way our slab roller works makes that not happen and the small mallet pressed air release I use is not great for speed or detail. I looked at one of the RAM presses but they are crazy expensive for both the machine and the cost of materials going forward.    

edit: Bailey pointed out that the barrel has to be reloaded often so there's that.

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two things.   contact bailey and talk to their expert on the actual machine you are thinking about buying.   it is in their interest to fully inform you so you can make a correct decision.  talk on the phone.   they welcome that interaction

 second,   do you have a  Harbor Freight  store near you?   they sell presses that have been adapted by handy persons to do tile pressing.  costs under $200.

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Thanks guys! Yeah the presses are great but not so much for field tile. We are adding a small arbor one this week to get away from the mallet pressing.

For field tile I use a flip over air release mold for 4" and get about 20 an hour when everything is said and done and they are ready to bisque. To do 6" inch one that way I would have to buy another frame and just find I am not really interested in continuing using molds (even air release) for field tiles.

There are a number of pretty expensive solutions (Baily's, RAM and Peter Pugger all sell several) but not going there either. Just a small shop and buying one of these expensive options will sap so much profit out of things for so long into the future that just not interested. They also kind of diminish the hand made aspect of selling an expensive are tile installation. It is part of the backstory so getting too mechanized I think does matter.

This week I am going back to the slab roller for all sizes and really eval that again. I have some plunger type clay cutters for 4" & 6" tiles and I am going to see what my finished hourly output is. If I could get it closer to 50 tiles an hour working at a normal steady pace I would be really happy. 

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55 minutes ago, Mark C. said:

I have seen that bailey extruder at a studio near SF but have no info on its use.I would call Bailey and talk story.

Hey Mark, I did contact Bailey and the main take away was keeping in mind that the barrel has to be reloaded frequently for tile so there's that. I also wonder how fast it is. I haven't found a video yet and some air powered things such as jacks move pretty slowly if there's resistance and clay extruding is going to offer a lot of resistance. If you were buying this for health reasons that wouldn't matter but if speed is an issue then it makes it a lot slower than the hand lever one or the one called big blue from North Star that has a wheel.

I'm coming to the conclusion that this isn't the answer for me.

 

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