IMPROVEMENTS IN CROPPING MACHINES
Year: 1878

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Dundas William Porteous at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 14th December 1878.
DUNDAS WILLIAM PORTEOUS, of Paisley, in the County of Renfrew, North
Britain, Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN CROPPING MACHINES."
This Invention, which relates to improvements in machines for cropping or
removing the pile or nap from textile fabrics, consists in improved arrangements
whereby the mechanism for effecting the same is simplified, and a considerable
economy in the cost and working of such machines obtained..
The said improvements are intended to be applied to that class of cropping
machines in which two or more of the ordinary revolving spiral cutting, shaving, or
cropping cylinders are employed and arranged at different parts of the machine so
as to act upon the fabric as it is passed over the ordinary bed, and in juxta-
position to the blade with which each spiral shaving or cropping cylinder is
provided.
According to this Invention, one spiral shaving or cropping cylinder is made to
perform the duty hitherto derived from two. The spiral cropping cylinder intended
to produce this result is supported in fixed bearings upon the framing of the
machine, and two beds and blades are arranged in the ordinary position or in any
other suitable manner relatively to the spiral. To provide for the necessary
adjustment of these beds while in position, they are carried in slides formed upon
or fixed to the end frames of the machine, in such a manner that they may be
adjusted independently of each other. Any suitable means of adjustment may be
adopted; but by preference I employ a crank and link in combination with an eye
bolt, which latter passing through a double jaw screwed to the slide piece is
embraced by a capstan or other nut confined in the jaw, so that when the said nut
is turned one way or the other the bolt is moved upwards or downwards and the
slide pieces carrying the beds are correspondingly raised or lowered. Hand levers
or treddles are likewise provided for lifting the beds entirely away from the
revolving spiral cutters when desired. The knife blades appertaining to each bed
are secured to separate carriers, and can be independently adjusted by means of set
screws or studs.

page_text: Machines may be constructed in accordance with my Invention having one or
any greater number of revolving spiral cutters with adjustable beds and blades as
hereinbefore described, according to the nature of the fabric to be treated or the
degree of finish required; and they may be made to crop one or both sides of the
material at one operation; but taking as an example a machine provided with one
Buch double cutting spiral, the mode of operation is as follows:-
-
The material to be shaved or cropped is led in the ordinary manner over stenting
bars, rollers, and in some instances past a revolving brush, over a bed situated at
any suitable part of the periphery of the revolving spiral cutter. The pile or nap
of the fabric is thereby partially removed and the material is thence led over
guiding rollers, which direct it to the second bed at another part of the periphery
of the spiral, where the cropping action is repeated, thence it proceeds round other
guiding appliances to the delivery rollers, through which it makes its exit from
the machine in a finished or partially finished condition.
In the case of machines intended to crop both sides of the fabric at one operation,
two or more spiral cutters are employed and arranged at different parts of the
machine, so as to act first upon the one and then upon the other side of the fabric
as it is passed over the different beds in the manner hereinbefore described.