Hi guys, it's Cindy Lietz, your Polymer Clay Tutor.
In today's PcT Product Demo, I'm gonna demo a review, the brand new Lucy Clay Machine, Mammoth.
Now, this is a very exciting tool that I'm gonna be showing you today.
It's completely different than anything else we've ever had in the Polymer Clay Industry
for rolling out sheets of clay.
And there's so much different about this machine that it's gonna take me a little bit to go
over it all.
So stay right to the end and I will show you the pros and cons of having a machine like this.
Now, first of all, this is a machine that was designed by Jiri Strunc.
He is an engineer and his daughter, Lucy, is a very talented polymer clay artist in
the Czech Republic.
And he wanted to make her better tools for the polymer clay... for working with polymer clay.
And this is one of them.
I've also shown you in the previous videos the Lucy Clay Slicer, and the Extruder, and
a bunch of their cool products.
Now, this particular machine is called The Mammoth M12.
Now this is the biggest machine that they have, this one in particular also has the
Lucy Clay Slicer attached to the side of it which makes it really really cool.
Now what's different about this machine than any other machine.
One of the first things is that the range and thicknesses that it can roll in the clay.
The way the gaps in the rollers are set up, you can roll as thick as sheet as 10 mm, I
mean 12 mm thick or as thin as paper.
So that's a huge range in thicknesses of sheets that you can roll with this particular machine.
Just to put it into perspective, my Atlas Machine, I'll show you the difference in size here.
In fact, The Mammoth could eat my Atlas for lunch.
It is so much bigger than any other machine.
They do have a model called The Elephant which is a little bit smaller and a little bit wider (skinnier),
but it still is way bigger than any of the other Pasta Machines out there.
As far as thicknesses and stuff go as far you can roll them.
Like I said, the 12 mm is actually 48 playing cards thick which is just short of a full
deck of cards.
And my Atlas Machine at the thickest setting could only do 8 playing cards thick.
So that's the difference in the range of thicknesses of sheets of clay.
One of the things, I mean there's a bunch of different things that Jiri did to this
machine to improve on it on what we have in the market.
Some of the issues that we have is the handle falling off, the clamp needing to be on the
side of the machine so that had to be clamped to the side of the table, the rollers leaving
black streaks, gears clunking together and leaving line marks, scraper blades that you
couldn't remove and so they will get dirty.
This machine has fixed all of those problems. As completely...
Like they say in all of their marketing, they say it's completely revolutionary... revolutionizes
the way Pasta Machines are being used for polymer clay, because it's completely different.
First of all, the sizes, I mean for this particular Mammoth is... you need a bigger space for
it so this is... this machine here is not going to be for every single person.
You need a larger space.
This also works better if it's a little bit lower because of the size of it, you don't
wanna be working up near your face.
It's nice if the table that you're working on is lower than your average work table.
And the roller width is a lot wider.
This particular roller width on The Mammoth is 10 inches wide, a typical Pasta Machine
is more like 6.
On The Elephant which like I said...
I'll show you a little picture of what The Elephant size difference is here.
It's a little bit shorter and a little bit skinnier, and a little bit lower but they
have the E12 which means the 12 mm gap in the rollers is The Elephant with the larger
gap and the E6 is The Elephant size that has the gap that is only 6 mm wide, which is still
a lot wider than what most Pasta Machines have.
Let's see what else I can tell you about this.
Other than the roller gaps, there is...
On The Elephant, the machine is... the rollers are 7, almost 8 inches wide so it's a little
bit smaller and still very usable.
The rollers are non-stick which means that the clay isn't gonna stick to them, the gap
space can go...
Like i said, it's huge right down to small and I'll show you how to use those in a second.
It's... the gearing system, they don't use regular gears on this machine.
They use a cam system and so if you listen, you can't hear anything.
There are no gears clunking together.
So you will never get those roller lines that happen.
I've done a video on it before explaining how the roller lines happen on your Pasta Machine.
It's because gears are clunking together and jerking the clay through.
That can't happen in this machine because of the gears' system.
To me, that's probably one of the most exciting parts of it.
It's also super strong so the way this is geared is it's one to two, so for every turn
of the handle, you get two turns of the rollers which means that it will pull your clay through
really super easily.
And I have a little bit of a shoulder problem and I don't find using this machine hard at all.
There are some things about it that are a little bit different, the way it's set up,
you don't have the typical thickness thing where you pull it out and click it from one
to the next.
It has this big dial here that moves the gears, I mean the rollers closer together.
This is a little hard for Doug to see but if you turn this dial, you might be able to
see that the rollers come closer together.
And because of this wide wide width, if you were to shove some clay in from one side here,
you may push the rollers out of alignment a little bit so what they've got set up here
is these little knobs.
So, let me just put it at the largest setting first and show you.
Now you can take a full pack of fresh clay, you've never been able to do this before.
Usually, what you have to do is you have to take slices off of it and run it through your
other machine and it takes a while to condition a block of clay.
Well here, you can actually take a fresh block of clay, and at the thickest setting, just
run the whole thing through.
Then you would bring it down to a size smaller so what I was talking about with these knobs,
what you do is turn this dial this way, make the gap a little bit smaller, and then to
support the rollers from the back side, you tighten this up just until you can feel them touching.
When you get the machine, you will know what that is.
You don't wanna crank down 'cause you'll push the rollers out of alignment.
But then now I can just do a smaller size and you see it just goes through quietly and easily.
And you just keep going down to whatever size you want.
So you just adjust those to support it and keep going down smaller and smaller.
And you could see this whole block is just easily running through.
Now, I'll go down a whole bunch here and I'll show you the scrapers and all the stuff that's
so easy about it.
You can just remove them and clean them right off but we'll go through and see how that's
like, no effort.
Oh another thing, I'll show you in a sec.
Look at that, so easy, and it scrapes it off beautifully.
The other thing is like I said...
mentioned about the regular Pasta Machines have a clamp that you have to clamp it to
the side.
This machine is set up completely different.
You can set it anywhere you like on your table and it actually has magnets on the bottom here.
And you can attach them to your table with these little things I'll show you here.
I have it set up a little differently which I'll say in a sec.
Now what you would normally do is you'd take this double stick foam tape that he puts in
the case there and these metal plates.
You would stick them down to your table so I will stick them down with metal plate with
the foam tape, set my machine right where the magnets are, right on top of that and
they'll stick to the table.
And then you can lift if off your table or move it if you need the space, 'cause this
do take a lot of space or if you wanna clean up underneath them and that kind of thing.
But what I've done instead is I have a commercial grade cookie sheet that I put down.
And it has... it's not a super strong, I don't know what type of metal it's made of, but
it's not strictly steel.
So it's not super strong on there but it's got enough of a magnet, it magnetizes to it
enough that it sticks quite nicely.
It also catches any crumbles that might fall from underneath so that works beautifully
for me but you could also stick it to those magnets if you wanted to do it that way.
Alright, so let's go just a little bit thinner with this and I'll show you something else.
Now, when you get down to the really small sizes, there is a chance that it could start rippling.
I don't know if it will...
I don't know if I got it at this size yet.
No, not really.
So it's coming through beautifully still but if you try to go too small, the paper thin,
what can happen is it can grab a little bit in the scrapers.
So, what you would do, this is as thin as I would go.
This is probably about 2...
1 1/2 playing cards thick.
It's showing on here as being around 1 mm.
There's little guides here which Doug can't see there but you would see when you get your machine.
But what you can do is take these thin sheets and run them through.
You can also buy these plastic sheets that they sell.
And you can run them through the machine at just paper paper thin settings.
So I just take these plastic sheets, I like to stick the clay to the shiny side so let
me just lay this down here.
You don't need much clay 'cause it's gonna stretch it out really really thin.
The reason why you might wanna use a sheet that thin is I've done a little piece of translucent
clay here, super thin, and you can just make it so thin and lay it over top of special
techniques that you wanna protect and have very translucent look.
There's some very cool things you can do with super thin clay.
But here, I've got it at a very fine setting, around 1 mm, I've got my sheets here and
I'm just gonna run it through.
I like to flop it open once it started running.
And you can start running this through the machine
and get this super super thin sheets. That.
So that's a very cool thing that you can do, and if it gets some clay stuck in it or you've
been using it for quite a while, the way you remove the scrapers.
And I don't know if Doug can see.
Can you see these little knobs down here?
You can't.
Underneath are some little knobs here and there's some on this side here.
And this is where you remove the knobs.
You just unscrew it, and this will remove the scrapers just like that.
So there's a little bit of clay there and then you just wipe it off with a baby wipe.
Get that right off of there and look at how easy it is to clean your Pasta Machine.
That's another thing that's always been hard.
In the past, we've had to take apart machines, sometimes the machine would never go back together.
And now, you can just add them like that.
I'm in a very awkward spot here.
You just tighten them back on, and then you're ready to go. Like that.
Actually, I should've showed you those scrapers.
They're completely unique, these ones are 3D Printed Scrapers, this is the one thing
I would still like to see them improve a little bit, because there is still clay that will
grab a little bit.
I'd love to see these made out of nylon instead of the 3D printed but they're amazing and
they're designed to sit perfectly on the roller so that they're really flush and go in perfectly
and easily.
So that's very cool.
And then you can see on the end here, just a sec, I'm just going to...
This is awkward from this angle.
And it just takes a few seconds to attach these back up.
So that is really cool.
Now, what else do I need to make sure to tell you about?
Oh, another cool thing that you can do with these machines, though I didn't really see
the need for it because I like...
I have no problems just using the crank.
One thing that you can do is it also comes with a little adapter.
I'll turn it this way here.
And you can remove this handle and where's the adapter. Here.
You can remove the handle, put on this adapter and use your power drill as a motor.
So you can just hook up your power drill like that.
I won't do it 'cause it's gonna take me a few minutes to set that up.
And besides, I think the battery's dying on there.
But you can use the power drill to run your machine.
He's talking about getting machines...
I mean, motors that you can attach.
But currently, this is the system that you can use if you want a powered machine.
Now, lastly, I will talk about the slicer.
A lot of you have seen the slicer before.
Many of you have the slicer, the slicer is used for slicing polymer clay canes.
I've got a cane, actually, my little Zinia Cane in there.
And it's nice that they've got this design so that it will actually attach right on the
end of The Mammoth so that you can not have to have two big tools on your desk.
They can all attach together and the way this slicer works is there's a little protective
magnet here and you can...
There's a dial on the inside.
You may not be able to see my hands in here.
But I'm going to just move the tray forward a little bit and then take a little slice.
You can get paper thin slices, perfectly-sliced cane slices.
So this machine will do that beautifully.
From what I hear, Jiri's got an adapter kit so if you already own the slicer, you can
attach it to The Mammoth.
I believe The Mammoth is the only size that you can add the slicer to.
I don't think you can add it to The Elephant but you'll have to look that up to be sure
about that.
What else can I tell you?
It's really quite an amazing machine.
It's completely different than the other machines.
Like I said, it's easy to clean.
So I'll just give you the pros and cons now then, I guess.
The pros are that it's super easy to clean, there's no gears so it's easy to turn, there's
no line issues, the rollers are non-stick so you have no black streaking.
They're really wide rollers so you can get large amounts of clay in.
The gaps that you can get, the different sizes are unlimited between 12 mm. all the way down
to a half a millimeter like paper thin, which is amazing.
It's silent, it's super strong, I don't think you can break this machine though I wouldn't
bother trying.
It's too expensive for that.
What are the other pluses?
The scrapers are super easy to take off and put back on so that is beautiful.
The cons that I would say would be the pricing is quite high, most people, unless you're
a professional artist or one of those people that must have the best of everything,
then it might be out of the price range for you.
The Mammoth is currently at $520 without the slicer.
The slicers are in the $200 range so I don't know if there's gonna be a break for it being
added or if you'd buy that separately.
I'm not totally sure how he's gonna handle that.
The smaller... Elephant, with the smaller gap, the E6, is down to I believe it's $390 so there is...
And then the other Elephant, the mid-range one is like with the larger gap, I believe
is four something.
So they're fairly expensive, but they're durable, they're beautiful.
There's nothing like them on the market and what would be the other con?
The other con I guess is this little fiddley thing, having to adjust the support for the
rollers, is kind of a pain but once you get used to it, it's easy to work with.
Also, if you have it at a larger size, you're only just doing minor adjustments just to
support it.
And you're mostly working in the smaller amounts anyways from most of your techniques.
You're not gonna need it at that super thick setting unless you are conditioning clay straight
from the block.
And you can see that, we went straight from a large block to a paper thin piece of clay
in a few seconds without any kind of hassle at all.
So I hope you are really impressed with this machine, it's now available.
Up until now, he had just a few of them out there and now he's got lots of them available.
You can find out more about them at www.lucyclaystore.com and he has a store for the US as well as an
International Store.
So you can pick them up and have one of these beautiful pieces in your studio.
Alright, so I hope you enjoyed that.
If you did, do let us know if you like this video.
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We've got so many videos, product reviews, lots of cool things that you will want to
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Alright, so we'll see you next time and bye for now.
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