CLAY WORKING INDUSTRIES. 161 



this means the speed of the cutter is proportioned to the flow of the 

 clay; if it were otherwise, the brick would be of unequal length. The 

 cutter is driven in the different types by either a cam motion, or by gear- 

 ing, or by link belting and sprocket wheels. The cutter consists of a 

 reel with cross wires which are made to cut down through the clay as it 

 runs under the axis of the reel. 



The bricks as fast as they are cut off, are separated by a belt running 

 at slightly higher speed; by increasing the speed of the separating belt 

 and increasing its length, any out put whatever can be removed and 

 taken care of. In some of the recent trials, the enormous quality of 250 

 brick per minute were produced and handled perfectly. This is at the 

 rate of 150,000 brick per day. 



There are machines now in operation which have made an average 

 run for many days at a time of 75,000. 



Among the automatic end cut brick machines now in successful 

 operation the most prominent are the following : 



1. The Chambers machine of Philadelphia. 



2. The Penfield machine of Willoughby, Ohio. 



3. The Frey Sheckler machine of Bucyrus, Ohio. 



4. The Wallace machine. 



Among the third class of stiff mud, brick making machines, there 

 are two of more prominence than the rest. 



The first of these, made by the Brewer Machine Co. of Tecumseh, 

 Mich., is a complicated affair. The principle of its action may be de- 

 scribed by saying that a vertical pug mill is used to force the clay down- 

 ward and a large "mud wing" or revolving arm is used to give the final 

 propulsion to the clay. This mud wing forces the clay down into a set 

 of molds, arranged around the periphery of a horizontal table. Each 

 mold box is filled with clay and when full, comes under a pair of plungers, 

 acting vertically, one working up under the clay and one down on it. 

 The clay is thus compressed to a solid block, which is subsequently re- 

 moved, when the movable bottom of the mold box is elevated to the 

 surface level of the table. 



The main point about this machine is that the clay is forced into 

 the molds by a power so obscure in its application that no structure, or 

 arrangement of particles is imparted to it, and the plunger pressure, 

 merely operating to compress a portion of clay already introduced into a 

 confined space, cannot possibly do it any harm in this way. Therefore 

 this machine should be an especially valuable one to apply to cla3 r s which 

 are naturaly too plastic for use in Auger mills or Plunger mills. The 

 capacity of the machine is about 25,000 per day. 



The second machine of the combination type is called the Grant 



machine or the Grant & Murrey. It consists of a vertical pug-mill, 



crowding the clay downward and forward something like the plunger motion 



of the Penfield plunger machine. A large mud-wing at the bottom of 



11 G. O. 



