A NEW METHOD OF TAKING UP FOR POWER AND HAND LOOMS
Year: 1833

page_text: TO ALL PERSONS TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME,
I, THOMAS WELCH, of Manchester, in the County of Lancaster, Cotton
Spinner, send greeting.
WHEREAS His present Majesty King William the Fourth, in and by His
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at West-
minster, the Fifth day of October last, for Himself, His heirs and successors,
did give and grant unto me, the said Thomas Welch, my exors, admors,
and assigns, His special licence, full power, sole privilege and authority, that
I, the said Thomas Welch, my exors, admors, and assigns, and every of them,
by myself and themselves, or by my and their deputy or deputies, servants or
agents, or such others as I, the said Thomas Welch, my exors, admors, or
assigns, should at any time agree with, and no others, from time to time
and at all times thereafter during the term of years therein expressed, should
and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within England, Wales,
and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of "A NEW METHOD OF
TAKING UP FOR POWER AND HAND LOOMS;" in which said Letters Patent there
is contained a proviso obliging me, the said Thomas Welch, by an instrument
in writing under my hand and seal, particularly to describe and ascertain the
nature of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be per-
formed, and to cause the same to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court
of Chancery within four calendar months next and immediately after the date
of the said recited Letters Patent, as in and by the same, reference being
thereunto had, will more fully appear.

page_text: NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, I, the said
Thomas Welch, do hereby declare that the nature of my said Invention,
and the manner in which the same is to be performed, are described and
ascertained in the manner following (that is to say) :-
My Method of Taking up for Power and Hand Looms consists in the
means herein-after described for causing uniformity of motion in the cloth as it
is woven and taken up on the cloth beam, without which, as is well known to
all weavers, the texture and quality of the cloth are considerably injured.
This arises from the woven cloth being taken up on the cloth beam one fold
or coil upon another; and hence if the cloth beam were allowed to revolve with
the same velocity during the operation of weaving, the increased diameter of
folds on the cloth beam would cause each additional fold to pass through more
space in the same time, and hence a gradually increasing speed to the taking
up. The effect of this would be a variation in the distances between one
pick and another throughout the whole length of the piece. Various means
have been tried and contrivances suggested to obviate this evil; that is, to give
to the cloth, while in the act of receding from the reed to be taken up, as
uniform a motion as possible, in order that the cloth may have the same
number of picks in each inch of its length. Various also have been the results
of these trials. And I shall now proceed to give a detailed description of my
said Invention, as applied to power looms for this purpose, presuming that it is
(if not perfect) more perfect than anything which has yet been done, refer-
ence being had to the annexed Drawing.
Figure 1, A, A, is an ordinary power loom, with those parts removed for
the sake of perspicuity, to which my said Invention does not belong. B; B, is
the cloth beam of such a loom, and C is the warp beam, which gives out the
warp over the roller D in the usual way, while the woven cloth is taken up on
the said cloth beam by my said Invention. E is the cloth, and the cloth beam
in this representation may be supposed to have taken up about half a piece.
Fis a block of wood, which I call a saddle, cut into a hollow shape, so as
partly to clasp the side of the cloth beam, and the greatest diameter of cloth
that is taken up at one time. The said saddle is united with a joint pin at G,
of the arm H, of the cranked lever I, the other arm J of the said cranked
lever has a forked end, and is used as a strap guider to the conical drums,
which I now proceed to describe. K is the ordinary tappit shaft of a power
loom, to which motion is given in the usual way. L is a comical drum fixed
on the said tappit shaft. M is another conical drum fixed on a counter shaft
N, and is driven by an endless strap 0, 0, from the cone and shaft L and K.
Now the action of this apparatus is as follows, viz. When the cloth is taken

page_text: up on the cloth beam, the cloth so taken up forms a diameter regularly greater
than the beam, and consequently the saddle F is forced proportionately or
more off to a greater distance from the centre of the said cloth beam, but still
kept pressing against the cloth by means of a spring P, which is made fast at
one end to the arm J of the cranked lever I, and at the other end to the rail
Qof the frame of the loom. Now as the saddle is forced or moved off in the
way above described, it is evident that the arm J of the cranked lever I will
also move in proportion, and with its forked end cause the endless strap O, O,
to traverse from right to left on the conical drums; that is, the endless strap
0, 0, is made to, traverse regularly and slowly from the larger to the smaller
ends of the cone L, and from the smaller to the larger ends of the cone M;
and consequently a loss of speed takes place in the cone M and its shaft just
in proportion to the increasing diameter of the cloth upon the cloth beam;
and therefore, in proportioning these cones to a loom, the smaller ends must be
to the larger as the diameter of the cloth beam is to the diameter of the
greatest quantity of cloth it is intended to take up. The longer these cones
are made in proportion to their taper and the better the said endless strap will
work upon them. Their length, however, must bear an exact proportion to
the thickness of the cloth taken up on the cloth beam, which will depend on
the difference between the length of the arms H and J of the cranked lever I.
The length of the arm J in power looms will always be determined by the
perpendicular distance between the breast beam R and the tappit shaft K, and
the length of the arm H must be some convenient proportion to the arm J, to
give a proper length of traverse to the endless strap on the conical drums. In
this instance the length of one arm is to the length of the other as four is to
fifteen, and consequently the space through which the endless strap will
traverse on the said cones is to the thickness of the number of folds taken up
on the cloth beam as four to fifteen also. Therefore this variable speed in the
second cone and its shaft when communicated to the end of the cloth beam, as
I shall next proceed to explain, will move off the cloth as it is woven from the
reed with a uniform motion while it is taken up on the cloth beam with a
variable one. On the end of the counter shaft N is fixed a pinion S, which
works into the wheel T, and on the centre of the wheel T is fixed a pinion U,
which works into the wheel V, and on the centre of this wheel V another
pinion W is fixed, which works into the wheel X, which wheel is fixed on the
axle of cloth beam B, and consequently this said cloth beam partakes of its
motion, which is, as I have shewn above, a variable one. There is another
change of speed to which the said cloth beam is subject, and is accomplished
by changing the size of the first pinion S. This is done to give to the cloth a

page_text: greater or less rate of taking up, cloth with fewer picks requiring to be taken
up at a greater rate than cloth with more picks. On the back of the second
pinion U, and between this said pinion and the wheel T, is a catch box Y,
better seen in Figure 2, one part of which is formed with the wheel T, and the
other part with the pinion U. Z is a spring lever made fast at the bottom
end of the frame of the loom, while the other end passes through a groove on
the outside of the said pinion U, and has a handle on the top. When the
loom has been working without weft (the taking up process going on at the
same time), the cloth will have receded from the reed, in which case the person
who attends the loom when he has prepared the shuttle takes hold of the
handle of the spring lever, throws the catch box out of gear, and allows the
cloth to come back to its proper place, which is done by a stretch given to the
warp in the usual way of a lever and weight attached to the yarn beam. This
done, the spring lever Z is liberated, the catch box falls into gear, and the
weaving goes on.
My said Invention may be somewhat varied in cases where thick cloths
are woven, for then it is probable the range of the said end G of the arm H
of the cranked lever I would become too great to act with precision. Under
these circumstances I adopt the following apparatus:-Let a, Figure 3, be
a saddle as before described, pressing against the cloth on the beam by means
of the spring c.
d, d, is a straight square or flat bar of iron, made fast at one
end to the said saddle, and allowed to move freely in an eye or guide e of cast
iron, cast with the rail f: This rail f is fastened at one end to the breast
beam 9, while the other end forms a support or carrier to the small upright
shaft h. At one end of the said square or flat bar d, d, is formed a small
rack i, which works into a small spur wheel j, fixed near the top end of the
upright shaft h, and on the bottom end of the said upright shaft is placed a
large spur wheel k, which works into a rack 1; this rack is furnished with a
strap guider m, which, when the apparatus is in motion causes the endless
strap n, n, to traverse on the surface of the cones o and p. By this arrange-
ment of parts the same effect is produced as by the arrangement already
described, and on some occasions, for the reasons I have above stated, may be
preferred, but the necessity of its adoption may generally be obviated by using
a cloth beam of a greater diameter.
I shall now proceed to describe the application of my Invention of taking
up to hand looms. Figure 4 represents an ordinary hand loom, to which my
Invention is applied, within the frame of which is fixed a light crank shaft q, q,
with two cranks r, r, and a small fly wheel at one end or at each end. This
crank shaft q, q, communicates with the lathe s, s, of the loom by means of

page_text: two crank arms t, t, one from each crank. Ou the crank shaft q, q, is placed
conical drum u, and another conical drnm v on a counter shaft w. From the
shaft w I drive the same train of wheels and pinions as herein-before described
for conveying the varying speed to the cloth beam B, B. A saddle x, with
the crank lever y, with its two arms z, z, and strap guider, taking the
strap,, on the two cones, complete the apparatus, which varies from the
application to the power loom in being driven from the lathe instead of from
the tappit shaft, as already described; and it is evident that when the weaver
works his lathe, the whole of the apparatus will be set in motion, and my
method of taking up carried on, as is the case in the power loom already
shewn; but, as the taking up ceases when the weaver ceases to move his lathe,
there is no necessity for the use of the catch box described in the application
to the power loom.
Having described my Invention of a new method of taking up for power
and hand looms, together with one of the arrangement of parts, by which the
same may be carried into effect, I hereby declare that I do not confine my
Invention to the exact construction of parts herein-before described, all which
may be varied and modified, which variations and modifications must depend
on the nature and construction of the loom to which my Invention is to be
applied. Nor do I confine my Invention to the application of two cones for
producing the differential motion of the cloth beam as already described, being
well aware that the same may be effected by means of what are well known to
mechanics by the names of expanding pullies, friction pullies, friction pulley, and
face plate, and similar modifications for producing the same effect; and the appli-
cation of this effect may be also varied by reversing the differential motion and also
applying it to the warp beam, and thereby increasing its speed as the circum-
ference of the yarn or warp decreases, which would regulate the giving off of the
warp, and thereby govern the taking up motion of the cloth as it is woven.
But although I do not claim any distinct or well known part of the machinery
already described, I do claim as of my Invention that arrangement of parts by
which a decreasing or differential motion is conveyed to the axis of the cloth
beam, to compensate for the increasing motion of the surface of the cloth,
which would take place where the cloth beam revolved at a uniform speed, as
already explained.
And this Invention being, to the best of my knowledge and belief, new
and never before used within that part of His said Majesty's United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland called England, His said Dominion of Wales, and
Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, I do hereby declare this to be my Specification
of the same, and that I do verily believe this ny said Specification doth

page_text: comply in all respects fully and without reserve or disguise with the proviso in
the said herein-before in part recited Letters Patent contained; therefore I
I do hereby claim to maintain exclusive right and privilege of my said
Invention.
In witness whereof, I, the said Thomas Welch, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, this First day of February, One thousand eight hundred