AN IMPROVED MODE OF PRINTING ON CALICO AND OTHER FABRICS AND MATTERS, AND IN MACHINERY AND APPARATUS TO BE EMPLOYED THEREIN
Year: 1855

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Thomas Almgill at the Office of the
Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 18th July 1855.
I, THOMAS ALMGILL, of Busby, near Glasgow, in the County of Lanark,
North Britain, Engraver, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention
for "AN IMPROVED MODE OF PRINTING ON CALICO AND OTHER FABRICS AND MATTERS,
AND IN MACHINERY AND APPARATUS TO BE EMPLOYED THEREIN," to be as follows:-
My improvement in printing consists in certain constructions and arrange-
ments of parts in machinery for printing on calico and other fabrics and
matters, in the principle known as "surface printing."
The novelty consists in having the pattern or device cut or etched through
thin copper, tin, wood, or other substance, and put on a wire fabric, which
fabric and pattern will be fastened on a hollow perforated cast-iron cylinder,
the perforated cylinder with pattern revolving round a fixed mandril, hollow at
one end, to which is fastened a color feeding box, working color-tight inside of
the perforated cylinder. The wire is used with a view to distribute the color
equally, and not as the sole means of transferring the pattern to the cloth,
though I propose in some patterns to use only wire in the way mentioned.
From the color box without I admit through the hollow end of the mandril

page_text: the color employed in printing to the fixed color box placed within the per-
forated cylinder.
In carrying out my Invention, I get a hollow mandril and fix it in suitable
framework; to this mandril I fasten a box to work color-tight against the
inside of a perforated cylinder. By a perforated cylinder I mean a cast-iron
cylinder filled with small honeycombed or square holes, which cylinder is made
to revolve round a fixed mandril and box. On this perforated cylinder is
securely fastened a wire fabric of such texture as will correspond with the
requirements of the pattern or cloth to be printed.
On this wire work I fix the pattern to be printed, drawn on the wire work
itself in a solution of gutta percha or other preparation, or etched out or eut
through in copper, tin, gutta percha, wood, or other substance, the choice of
which substances will be determined by the nature of the pattern, the fabric to
be printed, or the quantity of color that may be required on the cloth. One
end of the mandril is open for admitting the color through it to the fixed color
feeding box within the revolving cylinder from a color box without, which is
raised or lowered as more or less color may be required on the cloth by means
of an adjusting screw.
The feeding box I cause to work color-tight against the cylinder, and the
edges I place so near together as to make au aperture sufficiently small as to
admit color to pass through it, to fill up the pattern shapes as the pattern
cylinder revolves over it. The bowl will have to be so adjusted and lapped
as to fit exactly on the aperture of the feeding box, so as to prevent the
color from flushing or getting any where than into the pattern shapes. Under-
neath, but fastened to the mandril, I place a box to catch any color that
may be forced through the feeding color box in the process of working.
If more than one color is required to be printed I adopt the same process
as in working a single color. The pitch pins or marks for fitting one color in
the other will be on the surface of the printing pattern, as is now done in the
present mode of cylinder printing. It will be more convenient in some
patterns to use a flat press instead of the bowl and cylinder, in which case
the machine is somewhat simplified, but the process is exact the same.
In both machines the color employed in printing is brought into immediate
contact and connection with the pattern or device without the employment of
furnishing rollers or engraved or printed rollers, as heretofore.
The color feeding box I place beneath the flat grating or perforated plate,
and the wire cloth with the pattern I place on it, as is done in the cylinder
machine. The flat press corresponds to the bowl in the cylinder machine, and

page_text: is used for the same purpose, namely, to keep the color within the shapes
of the pattern.
The only addition in the flat press machine is an index for regulating the
distance of sketches it more than one color is required to be printed at a time.
This index I do not use for all fabrics; and for the larger style of patterns such
as is used for carpets or shawls, no index will be required, but pitch pins only,
as are now used in the ordinary block-printing process.