The big kiln is rated at 47 Amps – not sure how that calculates. In the latest glaze firing, there were 20 individual pieces, the pendant rack with 4 pendants, and 3 people’s worth of top-only glazed pendants finding little niches in between larger pieces. Given the relatively low cost of a firing, that’s not worth the envelope to make the payment.
(And for folks who haven’t seen our kilns, our “big” kiln is rather medium-sized.)
47 X 208 ~= 9.7 kilowatts
9700W X 24 hours ~=234 kilowatt hours Or between 1/3 and 1/6 of an average Texas household for a month.
At $0.10 per kilowatt hour that means a single firing runs about $23 in electricity costs.
Do they pay for their own clay and glazes?
For the most part yes, there is recycled clay that folks can use if the want to
Folks either buy their own glazes or pay a consumption fee to use ours
Then you’ll can increase the fee to include electrical, that ‘free clay’ and such to completely cover costs. This is mostly to address Beth;s earlier comment concerning not being able to afford stuff. No committee with the participation that Fired Arts has should have any trouble with their funding.
P.S. There should probably be a firing fee slightly less then what someone would pay at other area places (say 50%) to cover ALL of the expenses including the service of having someone else fire your project. That should reduce the abandoned projects since only those where the owner feels some value for it would get fired.
Walter I would suggest that you find those places first, I don t know any
Back when here were a places that did slip cast ceramic the firing fee as based on the cost of the
grreenware and its price was based on the price of the mold used Most would not fire
thrown or handbuild ceramics because of the danger to other work,
Charging a firing fee is a nightmare, Person A made 6 coffee mugs
person B has 2 large bowls, person C had 20 pendents and person D had a
set of 5 coasters, person E had a single tall vase
And I think we are paying less than that for power, so the cost is
not that high The reclaimed clay is at no cost to use, other than someone s time to work ti
I am going to mention a similar problem that folks have when they share an art booth, How do you split
up the booth fee? If you do 50/50 you end up breaking up a friendship over how to divide the booth Say one
person has 50 pairs of earring on a display and the other one has 5 necklaces that take up a 12 x12 inch area
It just means lot of argument about space and such. I don t think any committee chairman wants
to end up in that place, (BTW, what seems to work the best is percentage based on your percentage of sales_
Consumption fees and firing fees were discussed in another thread. I love the idea but there was a concern that only consumption fees might not be worth the cost of an ipad (someone also suggested sharing with jewelry so I’m not sure where we are on that). Collecting firing fees might be worth an ipad though. I voluntarily try to donate to fired arts whenever I have a bunch of things fired so I’m happy to pay consumption and firing fees.
The suggestion for a firing fee was some kind of token that cost $0.50 each and would burn off in the kiln. If something doesn’t have a token it doesn’t get fired.
Maybe yes. Maybe no. The free clay currently has not cost DMS $.10. It’s reclaimed abandoned clay. Many of us have purchased our own clay. Glazes have been paid for through honorariums. We didn’t use to provide glazes. And, the cost per piece is in the $.50 - $2 range for most pieces. Some folks provide their own glaze. If you want to be sure that a glaze is available when you want it, you bring your own. I’ve got 2 of the fritted, or “pigment” glazes that are more expensive than I would spend for DMS that are my personal glazes.
We’re still in the frugal era. We don’t need much. We don’t ask for much. We’re paying our way, by and large.
Oh wow, showing how little you understand the issue
Volume would make more sense but that would be a nightmare
for the person loading the kiln
It seems that we have folks that are not active int the area trying to
tell the committee how they do things
On the HAAS, you are making only your item, in a kiln several peoples Art could be ruined, and the kiln damaged. I see no comparison of equipment.
If you use the HAAS incorrectly you damage the HAAS, preventing future work.
I think they do. The long awaited tool/training matrix will be out probably this month. I expect a number of tools may no longer require training, or as much training.
I heard the MultiCam is the highest power consumer we have when it is operating. If we started charging for using it, it will be a different world. Let’s not go there please.
Is available space a problem?
Beware the Law of Unintended Consequences. We have too much demand for project storage as it is. I like pottery staying in Fired Arts as it currently stands.
I do not remember that or laser maintenance either in the two years I have been a member.
I agree, lets move onto something else.
Available space is much more the problem for this alleged solution than money. Given some of the things the board has bought recently, they’d probably be happy to buy some kilns. With the upcoming Christmas season, I wouldn’t lower our normal capacity by selling off either of the kilns we’ve got, and that pretty much means there’s no room for new kilns.
I’m not sure on the little kilns, but the larger ones we’ve got want 18" of free space when they’re running. I was considering making anybody (not random gum-flappers) seriously interested make a solid metal shelf that the little kilns could sit on. Hmmm. I should check the usage on the Kress before even mouthing about that. We’ve got 2 dedicated plugs back there. If the little kilns need the same service, then we could not be running multiple kilns at the same time.
Due to the rules that our esteemed board members have passed even the temporary storage of greenware in Fired Arts is actually a violation of our rules. Granted those same board members have historically chosen to ignore their own rules regularly. However, if we simply stopped using all of that shelf space for storage of personal projects, we would have enough room for additional kilns. And if additional electrical drops were needed that is certainly possible as well.
https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Rules_and_Policies#Storage
Storage in Committee Areas
We also have rule number 7, which was specifically passed to address the kilns in FA where I believe one of the kilns was the personal property of JohnK. I don’t know if that situation was ever corrected, but the discussion at the time was to open up the use of kilns to more then the two people who had access at the time. Granted they added Beth, but that hardly satisfies the ruling, unless DMS not owns both kilns.
This last concept is the heart of @zmetzing proposal. We shouldn’t have tools if we don’t have a means for members to learn to use them.
You already know that we are short on electrical power and are very oversubscribed. Is this where you will push ridiculous boundaries and interpretation of the rules next?