IMPROVEMENTS IN LUBRICATION, AND IN THE MEANS EMPLOYED THEREFOR."
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Jonathan Aldous Mays at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 14th July 1876.
JONATHAN ALDOUS MAYS, of 221, Gresham House, Old Broad Street, in the.
City of London. "IMPROVEMENTS IN LUBRICATION, AND IN THE MEANS EMPLOYED
THEREFOR."
This Invention consists in part in lubricating the bearings or other rubbing,
wearing, or fractional surfaces of engines, machinery, apparatus, or mechanism
for the purpose of reducing friction by making such bearings or other wearing
surfaces of wood or of such like porous material, or of metal or other material
combined with wood or such like porous material, and in filtering or percolating
the lubricant through such porous bearings or parts of bearings or other frictional
surfaces through or from a chamber or chambers constructed contiguous to but not
in direct communication with such bearings or other frictional surfaces. The
chamber or chambers from which the lubricant is to be filtered or percolated is or
are to have the inner or outer walls thereof coated or lined with or to be made of
a material impervious to the lubricant, except at the part or parts through which
the lubricant is to be filtered or percolated, so that the latter may be restricted
from filtering or percolating in a wrong direction. The said chamber or chambers
is or are to be filled or charged with the lubricant through suitable orifices or
through pipes provided with suitable means for being stopped or closed as by
plugs or taps. Instead of constructing chambers for containing the lubricant in
or upon the machinery or apparatus, separate lubricators may be made and
attached to machinery or apparatus somewhat in the same way that what are
known as needle lubricators are attached or employed. Thus a suitable vessel, say,
a glass bottle or other such cylinder, may be filled with a lubricant and the mouth
be plugged, or partly plugged, with wood or such like porous material. Then if
the plugged mouth of such vessel be inverted upon a bearing or other frictional
surface the friction will draw the oil through the plug and the surface touched by
it will be lubricated.
The chambers referred to may also be connected with suitable force pumps or
plungers, or with reservoirs of oil placed at a height above the same, so that the
lubricant may be forced or pressed through the pores of the wood by mechanical
means or by the action of gravity.
Another part of my Invention consists in applying the principle of capillary
attraction to lubrication by causing the lubricant to flow along or through absorbent
Price 201

page_text: material, not as heretofore form a vessel or reservoir containing the lubricant in a
fluid form, but from a mass of absorbent material charged with the lubricant to
the point or nearly to the point of saturation.
Where lubricating material is caused to flow by means of capillary attraction
from vessels containing the lubricant in a fluid condition, the action is similar to
that of a syphon, and as is the height of the fluid from the termination of the wick
or strand of absorbent material so will be the tendency of the action of capillary
attraction to empty the vessel and waste the lubricant.
There are cases also in which it is not practicable to connect the bearing or
other frictional surface with a wick or strand having its other end submerged in a
vessel containing fluid lubricant. By only charging to the point of saturation a
mass of absorbent material with a lubricant, and connecting the saine with the
bearings or other frictional surfaces, these and other inconveniences are avoided.
Thus, if a comparatively large mass of woollen, cotton, spongy, or other absorbent
material is connected by means of strands or strips of similar material to smaller
masses of similar material placed at distances more or less remote from, though at
near about the same level as the larger mass" & the whole is nearly saturated
with a lubricant, the addition of more or the subtraction of some of the lubricant to
or from any part of the mass or its ramifications will be very rapidly equalised by
the action of capillary attraction, and a sort of equilibrium of saturation will be
maintained throughout.
I make use of this condition, form, or kind of capillary attraction for effecting
lubrication, and I dispense altogether with vessels or reservoirs containing the
lubricant in a fluid state. Within or upon or against the bearings or other such
before-mentioned frictional or rubbing surfaces I place strips or pieces of woollen,
cotton, or other absorbent material, and I connect the same either at once or by
means of simlar strips of similar material to larger masses of the same or similar
porous material.
Subject to the condition of level, this "larger mass " of such absorbent material
may be placed or arranged in any position or place upon or near to the point at
which friction arises, at which it may be most convenient to bestow the same or to
apply the lubricant thereto.
The friction of the mechanism upon or near to the strips placed in or on the
wearing surfaces will draw therefrom sufficient of the lubricant to effect lubrication,
and so long as the absorbent material is not more than saturated with the lubri-
cant there will be no danger of loss or waste; so long, too, as it is kept fairly damp
or wet with the lubricant and connections are properly maintained with the bearings
or wearing surfaces so long will lubrication be efficiently maintained.
Among the many applications of this last-mentioned method of lubrication from
saturated masses of absorbent material are cases of rotary motion, such as the
rollers of roller skates, railway rolling stock, wheels of vehicles, and loose riggers
or pulleys in machinery. In such cases, slots or slits or other suitable cavities
may be made in the pipes or bushes or in the journals, and these may be filled
with absorbent material and connected with larger masses of such material arranged,
say, in annular, longitudinal, or other suitable recesses or chambers formed near
thereto. Where the absorbent material containing the lubricant is placed in such
a position as to be subject to rapid motion it should be enclosed in a chamber
in such a manner that the motion shall not have the effect of throwing off and
wasting the lubricant.