Pneumatic Murrine Chopper

[Greg Vriethoff]

Just got this in my inbox from OCR.

[Pete VanderLaan]

drum roll... and the price.?

[Eben Horton]

I think its around 1600 Pete.

just my opinion, but it looks really flimsy, but I have the mother of all whacker choppers so i am biased I think.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I used to have one Jeff Lindsay made but I sold it when I left Santa Fe. Josh Simpson has one that runs the cane in at a 45 degree angle so that gravity feeds the machine. It just has a simple cam that raises and lowers the carbide bit. It does a lot of murrini but I never saw it do 3/4 inch which had better be annealed well and have the expansions on the money or you'll get frit.

[Jordan Kube]

It says "patent pending". I suppose anyone can say that. I'd imagine something like that would be hard to patent given all the prior art.

[Pete VanderLaan]

I want to know why it would be pneumatic. The principle is an Archemedian wedge . I can't see why you would want to have to always have a compressor around if you used it. I mean I like compressors but I don't get it.

[Sky Campbell]

Originally Posted by Pete VanderLaan

I want to know why it would be pneumatic. The principle is an Archemedian wedge . I can't see why you would want to have to always have a compressor around if you used it. I mean I like compressors but I don't get it.

It's fast actuating and requires no effort. A micro switch and gravity feed it would almost be hands free. As far as air goes I thought compressed air was a requirement in a glass shop. How else would the pneumatic doors work? Haha seriously a ram that size with a spring return would require very little air per stroke.I have a pneumatic beer can crusher and it will work all night on a 10 gallon air pig (portable air storage tank). Helps keep the shop clean. Who doesn't like to smash a can to the thickness of a potato chip.

If I needed to cut cane you bet this is the design I would build. Cheers for the ingenuity. I do appreciate a good build.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Well, the can crusher is a big seller. Does it have multi tasking?

[Greg Vriethoff]

I'm not all that excited about it. The construction doesn't look all that sturdy to me.

It looks like it checks off a lot of the boxes that people would have for doing this in a production setting. The manual feed is the major exception in my mind.

Annealing and expansion/viscosity issues would be the big question mark for me. Are the images of the finished product indicative of a single run, or is there cherry-picking of the best pieces in the 3/4" range?

I don't have $1,600 to kick the tires, so I hope someone else will give feedback here.

[Tom Fuhrman]

Looks like one I saw in a shop in Benicia, CA over 20 years ago.

[David Patchen]

The manufacturer is sending me one for evaluation. I'll share my thoughts on it here after I play with it a bit.

[Steve Stadelman]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DDo_xfKZauA

My friend John Groth makes these for $860.00 they are well done.