Patent GB-355426-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in and relating to apparatus for feeding wires to a machine
IPC: B65G47/14
Filed: 1930-06-27
Abstract: 355,426. Feeding wires singly from bundles. BRITISH THOMSON-HOUSTON CO., Ltd., Crown House, Aldwych, London.-(Assignees of Illingworth, G. ; 1889, Windermere Avenue, East Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.) June 27, 1930, No. 19666. Convention date, June 27, 1929. [Class 142 (ii).] Relates to apparatus for feeding and positioning leading-in wires in stems for incandescent electric lamps and the like in stem-making machines, for example of the kind described in Specification 223,204, [Class 39 (ii). Electric lamps, Incandescent], in which a movable carrier supports a number of heads each adapted to receive the parts of a single stem including leading-in wires and, in the case of tipless lamps made according to Specification 147,294, [Class 39 (ii), Electric lamps, Incandescent], an exhaust tube, and to bring such parts to fusing and clamping means where they are united by a mass of glass. The machine for feeding the leading- in wires comprises a number of units each having a magazine for the wires, means for segregating the foremost wires, transferring grippers for seizing a wire and dropping it into position to be placed in a stem, and means for stopping the action of the transferring grippers in the absence of a stem, and for giving an alarm when the grippers fail to seize a wire. The wire magazine comprises a sheet 18, Fig. 4, forming the sides and end, and a sliding bottom 19 having a perpendicular part 20 adapted to bear against the wires and move them forwardly by the action of a spring on a rack 23 in sliding, connection with the part 19. The magazine is mounted on a carriage for vertical and horizontal movement, and when it moves forwardly, the tension on the spring is reduced so that camopened, spring-closed jaws, on entering in an opening 18<1> in the magazine, segregate a few wires, to enable the transfer grippers to seize one of them. The magazine then moves downwardly while a jet of air blowing on the wires prevents the grippers from taking more than one. The transferring grippers 56, Fig. 5, are mounted frictionally on a horizontal shaft 64 adapted to oscillate the grippers through 180‹ to transfer the wires from the magazine to the stem tube. The extreme positions of the grippers are controlled by stops, while they are opened and closed by wedgeshaped cams 71 and a spring 78. The grippers comprise a central blunt blade 56 between bevelled blades 57, 58. Additional support is given to the leading-in wire during transfer by a support wire 83 on the grippers which is controlled by cam action ro approach the blades while they are selecting a leading-in wire. If the blades fail to select and to close on a wire, they close along their whole length and thereby complete an electric circuit for operating an alarm. A catch 93, normally moved into inoperative position by the presence of a stem tube in the head of the stem machine, is moved to cause the grippers to be locked in the position in which they take the leading-in wires from the magazine on the absence of such stem tube. Since the grippers are all frictionally mounted on the shaft 64, the grippers of the other units continue to function. The wire taken by the grippers is transferred to a position over upper guide jaws 99, 100, Figs. 9 and 10, and lower guide jaws 101, 102 which are adapted to close together to form guide funnels for the wires dropped by the grippers while the flare tube or stem is held between the upper and lower guide jaws by the stem machine. The lower guide jaws guide the wire through a hole in a perforated plate forming a wire spacer to a wire stop carried by the stem machine. The lower spacer jaws of the second and third units are differently shaped from those of the first unit, since they have to clear the wires already placed in the wire spacer.