IMPROVEMENTS' IN' POWER LOOMS
Year: 1872

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Weldon Symington at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
15th October 1872.
I; WILLIAM WELDON SYMINGTON, of Colne Valley Iron Works,
Halstead,' in the County' of Essex, Engineer, do hereby declare the nature
of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS' IN' POWER LOOMS," to 'be' as'
follows:-
My Invention relates especially to power looms to be employed for
weaving Manilla, horse hair, and other similar fibres.
In weaving horse hair cloth, and in weaving Manilla and other fibres
into imitation horse hair cloth, the horse hair, Manilla, or other fibres arc
used as weft and have to be fed separately. For this purpose I sub-
stitute for the shuttle used in ordinary looms a metal needle or rod of a
length rather greater than the width of the cloth to be made, which
needles has reciprocatory motion in horizontal guides and passes across
and between the warp threads, its end being furnished either with a
hook of the kind ordinarily used in hand looms for weaving horse hair,
or (which I prefer) with a spring hook, the pressure of which is capable
of being regulated as required by means of a set screw into which hook
the fibres are consecutively fed by hand. The requisite reciprocating

page_text: motion is communicated to the needle by means of horizontal levers
driven by a cam keyed on the driving shaft, the said cam being of such
a form as to allow of a short "dwell" at the end of each stroke so as to
give the attendant time to place a fibre on the needle by which the said
fibre is carried between the warp threads to the other side of the cloth,
where the end of the fibre which has been gripped by the hook of tho
needle is disengaged therefrom by a releasing lever actuated by a double
cam on the driving shaft on which are also keyed two double cams
which actuate the reed. The harness of the loom consists of seven
"lames," two for the selvage of the cloth, and five for the "work."
These "lames" are raised and lowered by means of levers actuated by
seven cams on the driving shaft, these cams being of such forms and
keyed in such positions on the said shaft as to cause the selvage "lames"
to raise alternate warp threads (as in plain weaving), and the "lames
for the "work" to raise consecutively ono warp thread in five, the weft
being thus caused to pass over four warp threads and under the fifth.
"
The sinkers with which the "lames" arc weighted are attached to
cords which pass around double grooved pulleys mounted loosely on a
horizontal shaft. This improvement which is applicable to ordinary
looms) gives a steady motion to the harness.
Instead of actuating the needle by the horizontal levers herein-before
described, the said needle may be actuated by a lever having recipro-
catory motion in a vertical plane. The upper end of this lever is jointed
to the end of the needle, and the lower end of the said lever carries a
friction roller which works in a horse-shoc cam. The lower end of the
said lever is thus so guided that although the said lever has a radial
motion it also rises and falls in such manner and to such an extent as to
cause its upper end to have rectilinear motion in the direction of the
axis of the needle. The lever is actuated by a connecting rod from the
cam hercin-before described which cam is in this arrangement keyed to
a vertical shaft driven from the main shaft by bevil wheels. Or the
needle may be actuated by a lever to which motion in a horizontal plane
is imparted by the aforesaid cam.