posted May 06, 2003 08:53 PM               

What I need help with, is details of ceramic extrusion machinary such as:

1. Cost of machine
2. Energy requirements/consumption
3. Specifications (eg screw rotar speed, dimensions of machine, operating temps and pressures, maximum production rate.)

As we want to produce a variety of floor tile sizes, 2 ceramic extruders both with a maximum production of 9t/hour would be fine. Can anyone email me any useful information or at least direct me to somewhere helpful? Most companies seem disinterested in helping me.

Thanks

posted May 08, 2003 09:02 AM               

A good book to read is:

Benbow, J., and Bridgewater, J., Paste Flow and Extrusion, Clarendon Press,
Oxford (1993)

From this you will get a better idea as to what materials propoerties you need to specify before you can calculate the size and power requirements for an extruder.

Amidst the many questions are solids volume fraction, viscosity, degassing, abrasiveness, corrosion...

Also, are you planning to extrude through a rectangular die to a finished profile, or extrude a billet and then stamp into shape...? This changes many parameters as you can imagine.

It may be worthwhile borrowing/purchasing a small scale extruder to examine the processing requirements before you specify full-scale machinery, or should I say it WILL be worthwhile... There are many unforeseen problems that may come your way including solids transportation problems, mixing, pressure vs. throughput, air bubbles in the clay, surging, all of which can be eliminated by careful extruder design/specification.