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Potters love plastic clay. On the wheel it enables pulling larger, more overhang, thinner walled pieces. For beginners it can make the difference between a piece or a collapsed lump of mud. The downside is high drying shrinkage and its danger of cracking. But potters know how to exercise care in drying to get success anyway.
This industrial jiggering machine has the opposite priority: Ability to hold shape immediately after forming and dry quickly and crack-free. The secret is low plasticity stiff clay (notice how it splits around the edges when flattened). Notice, in the video, that it does not even stick to this heated metal mold. Note also how the machine avoids tearing it by applying pressure slowly right to the end. Even then, the vertical splitting on the outer belly and the peeling on the edge of the rim betray it's poor plasticity. This clay would be completely unusable by a potter, but ability to dewater quickly and shrink minimally make it perfect here.
| URLs |
https://www.instagram.com/p/DQOvqkQjNg7/
Video on Instragram shows how non-plastic and stiff the clay needs to be for use in this multipart metal mold jigger machine. |
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