IMPROVEMENTS IN DOFFING AND DIVIDING APPARATUS APPLICABLE TO CONTINUOUS CARDS
Year: 1870

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Benjamin Joseph Barnard Mills
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 18th June 1870.-A communication from abroad J. S. Bolette,
Engineer, of 34, Rue du Progrès, Brussels, in the Kingdom of
Belgium, to be as follows:-
I, BENJAMIN JOSEPH BARNARD MILLS, of 35, Southampton Buildings,
in the County of Middlesex, Patent Agent, do hereby declare the nature of
the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN DOFFING AND DIVIDING APPARATUS
APPLICABLE TO CONTINUOUS CARDS," a communication to me from abroad
J. S. Bolette, Engineer, of 34, Rue du Progrès, Brussels, in the Kingdom
of Belgium, to be as follows:
The improvements relate to the replacing of the comb by a cylinder
serving at the same time as a doffer and a comb, dissimilar in its
arrangements to any such mechanism hitherto employed. It is thus
placed tangentially to a continuous card on the entire width of the latter,
and its circumference is provided with bristles or horsehair or other
equivalent material arranged like a brush for detaching the sliver of wool
from the card, each row of bristles or horsehair is separated from the
other by a moveable blade lodged in a groove which extends throughout

page_text: the entire length of the combing cylinder in such a manner that these
blades by the effect of their gravity when at the top of the combing
cylinder are below the level of the bristles, whilst at one hundred degrees
lower they begin to be on a level with them and commence disengaging
in an uniform manner the sliver of wool which they contain, at one
hundred and eighty degrees the blades have completely left their groove
and lifted the sliver entirely; in order to pass it on to an endless hori-
zontal apron formed of leather straps, placed on two drums arranged for
that purpose, the width of these straps is such as is requisite for receiving
the small ribbons out of the main sliver to form rovings.
At about the middle of the endless apron, the sliver meets with a
roller under which it passes and where it is divided into as many parts
as there are straps comprising the endless apron.
This effect is produced by circular blades the edges of which are either
sharp or provided with teeth and which are mounted on a shaft placed
under the strap of the apron between the two drums, each blade
penetrating through the spaces between the straps into grooves cut for
the purpose in the upper roller.
A rake placed after this divider prevents the small ribbons from
rolling round the upper roller and guides them to a separating cylinder
provided with collars which conducts one half of the ribbons to the upper
slubbing rollers and the other half to the lower slubbing rollers where
they are transformed into rovings.
The right to make the following modifications is reserved,―
Firstly. The construction of the doffing or combing cylinder by
suppressing the bristle or horsehair brush and replacing it by a stecl
cylinder grooved and threaded whilst still retaining the moveable blades
above described for detaching the sliver, not from the bristles, but from
the teeth of the combing cylinder.
Secondly. The mechanism for dividing the sliver either by placing the
sharp blades with or without teeth after one or two cylinders composed
of washers and into the intersections of which the circular dividing blades
work, or by replacing the circular blades by vertical knife edged blades
to which a continuous alternating motion is imparted.
Thirdly. The plane of endless apron formed of straps of any material
by curving it in such a manner that directly after the division of the

page_text: sliver it carries the ribbons of wool to the upper and lower slubbing
rollers.
Another system of divider consists in placing below the comber a shaft
provided with circular blades penetrating in the teeth of the continuous
card and cutting up the sliver of wool. The furrows traced in the card
by this division are occupied by fixed or moveable blades at the point of
contact of the comber with the card in such a manner as to leave perfect
freedom to the action of the latter.