It is not all beer and skittles (Aussie expression meaning it is not all good). The blades and spaces are made from German steel and have been rolled and punched out in a die press. Unfortunately there are no more blades available. The metal contains nickel to prevent rust.
I have to break down triplet blades to get the blades. I also have to clean old spaces (from old blades) to make up the blades. Slicing triplets, I get on average 5 cuts a blade, two small cuts, two medium size (height of stones) and one large cut.
Slicing my obsidian backing for doublets at 2.1mm and 2.4mm I get a maximum of two cuts out of a blade because I am slicing one large block at a height of around 30mm or even higher.
Slicing Variscite at 6mm, 40mm high, I get two cuts.
The blades have their limitations. I can only slice 3” square blocks of material, and usually a max of about 35mm in height.
The blades \ machine also doesn’t like harder material, so no good for agates or the porcelain jaspers.
I would say it slices material up to a hardness of 6 to 6.5 ok.
It is fiddle making blades, and sometimes time consuming to run big cuts, but for expensive rough it does maximise yields. The machine would be perfect for precision slicing of thin strips of material for intarsia. You can run a cut through at say 2mm ( slice width), then glue it to another slice of different material, lie them flat in the block and slice them again to whatever thickness you need..getting perfectly sliced already bonded strips. You could take it further and repeat the process to achieve perfect checkerboard slices.
I think there is a market in the US for such machines. They are a precision instrument, with the head of the machine perfectly balanced with a flywheel so the machine starts and stops gradually to avoid flexing if blades.
Cheers,
Mike