Improved Jacquard Mechanism for Lace Machines.
Year: 1899

page_text: Date of Application, 23rd Feb., 1899-Accepted, 6th May, 1899
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
Improved Jacquard Mechanism for Lace Machines.
I, CHARLES DENTON ABEL, of Birkbeck Bank Chambers, Southampton Buildings,
in the County of London, Consulting Engineer and Chartered Patent Agent, do
hereby declare the nature of this invention (as communicated to me from abroad
by the Firm of Alb. & E. Henkels, of Langerfeld, near Barmen, Germany) and in
what manner the same is to be performed to be particularly described and ascer-
tained in and by the following statement:-
This invention has for its object an improved construction of the lace machine
described in the Specification to Patent No. 11411 of 1894 and relates more par-
ticularly to an improvement in the arrangement for actuating the appliances
whereby the motion of the bobbins is regulated in correspondence with the design
to be produced.
According to the said patent these appliances, consisting of plates, are subject
to the direct action of the rollers of a jacquard chain; but this arrangement is
subject to the disadvantage that every irregularity in the jacquard chain (whether
this arises from the rollers, or the wires on which the rollers are mounted, not being
perfectly equidistant, or from their not lying exactly in the same cylinder-surface)
is directly transmitted to the actuating mechanism of the plates and consequently
to these themselves and to the motion of the bobbins.
In the one case the plates are set in motion either too soon or too late, in the
other case the motion will be too great or too small.
As an absolute uniformity of the jacquard chain is not attainable owing to the
peculiarity of its, otherwise very practical, construction, a regular action of the
laca machine could not be obtained by the arrangement described in the said patent.
According to the present invention the actuating mechanism of the said plates
has been altered in such manner that irregularities in the jacquard chain cannot
be transmitted to the movements of the plates and through these to the motion of
the bobbins.
The essential feature of the improvement, which is shewn in Figs. 1, 2, 3 & 4
of the accompanying drawings in two modifications, consists in that the rollers of
the jacquard chain do not act directly upon the actuating mechanism of the plates 1,
but upon lifting hooks which are brought under the action of lifting knives and
are actuated by these, this motion being then transmitted to the plates I.
Fig. 1 shew's a cross section of this arrangement. The rollers of the jacquard
chain R act upon the beaks u¹ of the small levers u and these act through slides
or needles on the lifting hooks which are connected to the axes of the
plates I through wires t levers s³, s, and cords or pulls J; Fig. 4 shews the com-
plete arrangement to a smaller scale. The lifting hooks are brought under the
action of the knives M which receive a regular alternating up and down motion
from the machine by suitable means.
In the arrangement shewn at Fig. 2 this last mentioned motion is obtained, by
way of example, by oscillating cam grooves E with which the ends of the knives M,
that slide in slots in the framing, are engaged by means of rollers m.
The cam grooves E are formed in segment-arms E' mounted upon an axis E³

page_text: and actuated by a cam groove K. Pushers 2 sliding in a frame T and actuated
by springs 3 serve to move the lifting hooks t¹ out of the path of the knives into
the position of rest. In the construction shewn, the levers s are divided into two
groups for actuating the plates I, being grouped with the adjacent ones either to the
right or to the left, and are correspondingly divided into two rows and have two
corresponding knives, which during each complete revolution of the bobbin-driver
are consecutively raised and lowered once. Fig. 3 shews a modification of the im-
proved arrangement in which the lifting hooks t¹ are arranged in a single row
and only one knife M is employed, which, during one revolution of the bobbin-
driver, is raised and lowered twice by means of lever X, double cam W, and
spring W. The withdrawal of the lifting hooks is effected either as above des-
cribed by means of needles 2 and springs (Fig. 1, or by the springs of the
plates I themselves, the wire pulls t being for this purpose connected to one side
of the lifting hooks as shewn at Fig. 3 so that they tend to turn the lifting hooks
to one side on their pivot-pins.
The motion of the knives or knife M can be readily so arranged that it always
commences accurately when the bobbins are in a certain position in their guides,
and as those lifting hooks which have been actuated by one row of rollers v of the
jacquard chain are simultaneously seized by a knife, it is evident that the plates T
corresponding to those lifting hooks will also be all simultaneously moved at the
correct moment, and in a perfectly uniform manner, irrespective of whether the
lifting hooks have been brought somewhat earlier or later or somewhat more or
less perfectly under the action-of-the-knives, in consequence of irregularities in
the rollers of the jacquard chain R.
Thus it will be seen that all irregularities in the movements of the plates I and
consequently of the bobbin motion produced thereby are effectually prevented-and
the working of the lace machine will, by means of the above described improve-
ment, be rendered perfectly reliable and practical.
The other parts of the lace machine are the same as described in the said Specifi-
ration No. 11411 of 1894 and those parts of the machine shewn on the accompany-
ing drawings that are the same as the corresponding parts in the drawings of the
said specification are also marked with the same letters of reference.
On comparison it will be seen that the herein described mechanism is substi-
tuted for the elbow levers of the former patent, which is acted upon directly by
the jacquard chain R and is connected by the pulls J to the levers's st.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of this invention
and in what manner the same is to be performed, I declare that what I claim is:-
An improved construction of the jacquard mechanism of a lace machine of the
kind herein referred to, wherein the pattern of the jacquard chain is transmitted
to the actuating mechanism of the plates that control the bobbin motion, by means
of lifting hooks operated by reciprocating knives combined and operating substan-
tially as herein described.
Dated this 23rd day of February 1899