Patent GB-264805-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in and relating to automatic machines for manufacturing electric incandescent lamps and similar articles
IPC: H01K3/10
Filed: 1926-12-15
Abstract: 264,805. British Thomson-Houston Co., Ltd., (Assignees of Illingworth, G.). Jan. 19, 1926, [Convention date]. Making lamps; filaments; leading-in wires.- Comprises a machine for making entirely by automatic operations mounts for miniature electric lamp bulbs consisting of two parallel lead wires held together by a glass bead and supporting a short spiral filament, as shown in Fig. 35. All the operations are performed around an intermittently rotating table 23, Fig. 1, provided around its edge with a number of pairs of grippers for holding vertically the two wires of each mount, each gripper comprising a central fixed spacing jaw and two outer pivoted jaws 24 coacting therewith, as described in Specification 189,459 in connection with a machine for making mounts of the same type. At position A of the rotating table the two wires A<19>, Fig. 5, are fed upwards to the grippers 24 bv a feeder A' which has serrated grippers A<12> that hold the wires until the feeder reaches the uppermost position, shown in broken lines, but release them as the feeder falls. At the lowermost position of the feeder, a cutter A<35> mounted on it is moved horizontally to sever the wires. At position B a glass bead is threaded automatically on the wires. The beads B<2> are fed from a receptacle B<1>, Fig. 13, by a pin B<6> rotating with a shaft B<10>. The pin is adapted to pause to drop the beads on to a vertical guide wire B<3> that conducts them to the lead wires carried by the table 23, an escapement, consisting of three pairs of grippers, being provided to pass them one by one. The pin B<6>, with its carrier, is moved laterally to enable it to pass the guide wire B<3> and its enclosing tube B<4>. At position C the ends of the wires that are to be attached to the filament are flattened by horizontally sliding anvils operated by toggles C'. At position D hooks are formed on the ends of the wires to receive the filament by complementary shaped jaws D', D<2>, Fig. 17. At the next three positions E, F, and G, burners are arranged to fuse the glass bead about the wires. The lower ends of the wires are spread outwards, as show in Fig. 35, at position H by four benders H<1>, H<2>, H<24>, H<25>, which first embrace the wires as shown in Fig. 20, and then assume the positions shown in Fig. 21. At position J the wires are: gripped between three members J<1>, J<2>, J<3>, Fig. 23, which space and shape their upper ends as shown in Fig. 35, ready to receive the filament. The filaments are coiled in the machine, and cut to lengths provided with straight ends, by a coiling- head K<6>, Fig. 1, and associated mechanism as described in Specification 218,674, but an oscillating carrier K<68> seizes them as they are formed and carries them to the formed lead wires at position K. Here the straight ends of the filaments pass into the hooked ends of the wires, but the carrier rises a little higher to impart the arched shape to the filament, and while the carrier holds the filament in position a pair of bifurcated jaws straddling the carrier pinch the hooked ends of the lead wires to clamp the ends of the filament therein. This operation is repeated at position L by a pair of jaws L', L<2>, Fig. 33, slidably arranged in a housing L<10> and adapted to be closed by a rotary cam L<11> operated by a lever L" and a spring L<14> when these are released from a catch L<15>, L<16>. The mount is now completed and is swept from the grippers 24 at position M into a shoot M<7>.