Building A Pugmill
Building A Pugmill
Pugmills come in a variety of sizes and flavours. Basically, they all contain some kind of “auger”,
rotating slowly inside a barrel. The auger has blades arranged in a spiral pattern along a stiff strong
shaft, so that it chops and pushes the clay along inside the barrel.
At the input end of the barrel is some kind of hopper where you can feed in lumps of clay to be
squashed and kneaded. At the other end, the barrel tapers suddenly so the exit hole is smaller, about
half the area of the main barrel. Clay emerges from this end in a long cylinder, squashed smoothly
together as it comes out the smaller hole, and more-or-less ready to use.
Top-of-the-range machines have a fairly long barrel divided into two parts, with an extra chamber
half way along between the “entry” end and the “exit” end. An airtight lid fits closely on this
chamber, and a pipe leads off to a vacuum pump which runs all the time when the machine is in use.
The idea is to suck out as much air as possible from the clay as it passes along the barrel, to give a
denser bubble-free product. You pay more (a LOT more) for one of these de-airing machines.
A pugmill without the vacuum chamber is called a “non-de-airing” machine. More like a
Volkswagen than a Cadillac, but not to be despised. The home-made ones described below have
pugged many tonnes of clay , and look like lasting for ever.
If you set out to make your own pugmill, you have to make a decision about the materials to
use.
• Ordinary mild steel is available and cheap, but expect some trouble with rust.
• Cast aluminium alloy seemed like a good idea in the first mill I made, but internal corrosion
in the barrel was such a problem that a year later the machine had to be rebuilt.
• Stainless steel is strongly recommended. Not much different to weld, and not expensive if
you can obtain scrap offcuts of pipe or sheet.
The chain-and-sprocket approach has a lot to recommend it. Old motor cycle parts are easy to
come by, and the chain doesn’t require the same tension adjustments that vee belts demand.
The layshaft carrying D and E can be mounted in a fixed position, and adjustment provided
only for the position of the top layshaft and the motor, for belt tensioning.
The Venco machine pictured earlier uses just vee belts and pulleys, That model has a very
small pulley (less than 2 inches, I think) on the motor shaft, driving a pulley of about 8 inch
size on a layshaft. This layshaft carries a second pulley, double-grooved , about 2 inch size,
with two A-section belts driving the final large pulley (about 8 inches again) on the auger.
Anything less than the double-belt drive on a big pulley is likely to fail under load.
The motor on the right (without the capacitor) looks much the same, but isn’t designed to start
under load. Once it gets up to speed it runs the same as the other kind, but isn’t really suitable
for this job. Switched on with the pugmill full of clay, the motor may be unable to get up speed,
and gets hotter and hotter until it burns out.
Clockwise or AntiClockwise?
It doesn’t matter, really. You can make the auger with the blades arranged in a left-hand spiral,
or a right-hand spiral. But whichever one you choose, the auger has to rotate so it pushes the
clay along towards the exit. You can usually rearrange the wiring in an electric motor to reverse
its direction, but if this is a problem you’d better plan ahead and make the spiral on the auger to
match the direction of the motor.
For the tapered portion between the big barrel and the smaller exit pipe, you might be lucky and
obtain a stainless offcut of tapered pipe
Rolling the stainless sheet into a cone is not so easy. In my case, I turned a tapered plug from
hard wood, just the right size, and used it as a mandrel to support the pipe while it was
hammered smoothly into shape. Then the edges were welded where they met, and the weld
was ground smooth from the inside using a small abrasive stone in an electric drill. Finally, a
bit more panel-beating and trimming so the tapered portion fitted accurately against the two
sizes of pipe.
Now comes a tricky bit. When you come to weld the tapered cone onto the big pipe, you can’t
just prop one against the other and weld all the way around. The pipe will distort as you heat it,
and it’s important to keep the barrel truly circular. You really need some kind of restraint to
keep the pipe in shape, and a way of tacking the two parts together a little at a time to keep
them that shape while the main weld is applied.
With the metal strap in place and the bolt pulled up tight, you can apply a little tack of electric
weld through one of the holes, say on the North side. Now go to the South side and apply
another tack. Then again on the East, and again on the West. Give the pipe a little time to cool
between tacks. With enough tacks in place, you can remove the strap and make a complete
weld all around the join. Followed of course by careful grinding from within, once more using
an abrasive wheel in an electric drill.
The Hopper.
The left end of the long handle was welded rigidly to a further short bar, descending to the only
hinged joint in the whole construction, at A (lower left of sketch). One would think that the
descending plunger would bind against the hopper wall, but there was enough clearance for it
to move. I chose to make mine with a closer fit between plunger and hopper, but this required
a hinged joint between handle and plunger. Not moon rocket science this, but you need to think
about it.
It surely helps to have the use of a lathe to turn the necessary step on the end of the auger shaft
so it plugs into the centre of the thrust race, or to make some kind of adapter bush if needed.
And it helps if you have a small centre hole drilled in each end of the shaft, to support it
between centres when grinding the blades to shape. More on this later.
The two big semi-circular blades have to be twisted to the required spiral shape. Harry Davis
gives a detailed description of doing this (pages 152 and 154) in his “Potters Alternative”
textbook It involves gripping one end of the blade in a vice while you twist the other end, after
due thought about which way to bend it (left or right hand spiral) and how much bend to give.
We’ll assume you have this all worked out, so the blades can be welded to the end of the shaft.
Blades 1 and 6 are in similar positions. Blades 2 and 7 are in similar positions.
Make 2 turns between A and X so blade 6 will fit on the shaft in the same position as blade 1.
Trace this spiral onto the shaft with a felt pen. The intersections of the spiral path and the
circular bands 2 to 7 give the contact points of blades 2 to 7
When you come to weld the small blades to the shaft, you need some kind of jig to hold each
one in place. Harry Davis suggests using little blocks of wood cut obliquely at one end, to lie
snugly against the shaft while the new blade is held against the sloping end. Try tacking all the
blades in place, and giving the whole set a final inspection before completing the welds.
The newly welded set of blades is unlikely to fit snugly into the barrel, and will need to be
trimmed accurately to a cylindrical outline. The next photo shows one way to do this. The thick
block of wood is a few millimetres longer than the auger shaft. The two upstanding pieces of
chipboard at the ends carry pointed screws which are used to support the shaft “between
centres” using the two little central holes which you thoughtfully provided when originally
making it. The whole assembly is clamped securely in a vice, and the auger is rotated slowly
while you hold an angle grinder in a suitable position. Trim the blades so the auger slides easily
into the barrel, with a little clearance (say 3 mm) all around.