IMPROVEMENTS IN OR APPLICABLE TO MACHINES FOR OPENING AND CLEANING COTTON
Year: 1881

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Joseph Bayley and Thomas Bayley
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 7th October 1881.
JOSEPH BAYLEY, of Ashton, in the County of Lancaster, and THOMAS BAYLEY, of
Stalybridge, in the same County, Cotton Spinners. "IMPROVEMENTS IN OR
APPLICABLE TO MACHINES FOR OPENING AND CLEANING COTTON."
Firstly. Our improvements are made upon those for opening and cleaning cotton
described in the Specification of Letters Patent granted to Edward Buckley, dated
the 27th day of March 1875, and numbered 1111, and illustrated by Fig. 1 of the
Drawings annexed to the said Specification.
In that Invention there was a compartment to receive the droppings or dirt
coming through the grid, and it has been proposed to make divisions in this compart-
ment; but owing to the fact that the air has been admitted to the entire compart-
ment, adverse and contending currents have been formed, so the dirt coming into
the compartment through one part of the grid has been carried out more or less
through another part of the grid, and has thus been mixed again with the cotton
while passing to the cages.
Our Invention consists in dividing or partitioning the said compartment for
droppings into two or more separate compartments, to which the draught is
separately admitted and regulated, so that there is no contention between the
draught at one part and that at another part of the grid, and the dirt from the cotton
passing through the grid will thus drop and remain in each separate compartment
until it is removed at intervals in the usual manner.
We prefer to make the divisions in the dropping compartment by boards or
plates hinged on a horizontal axis, and passing across the machine, so that they can
be readily moved to one side when the dirt or droppings is to be taken from the
compartments.
In some cases this part of our Invention further consists in arrangements for
admitting the draught by employing hollow tubes or boxes of thin metal perforated
with slits or holes, or in using wire cages extending across the machine from side
to side, the air being admitted at the two open ends.
In some cases these perforated hollow boxes, tubes, or cages have an inner box
similarly perforated, the one box being moveable in or on the other to increase
or diminish the orifices between them for the draught to pass through.

page_text: The object of these arrangements is to so admit the draught to each part of
the grid that there will be no contending currents, and so regulate it that it will
have force enough to keep back the fibre while allowing the heavy droppings
and dirt to pass through the grid into the compartments.
Secondly. Our improvements are applicable to other opening and cleaning
machines besides those herein before mentioned, where the fibre is operated upon
by beaters, and there is a grid for the heavy dirt and droppings to pass through,
and upon which a draught is operating, and consists in forming partitions or
compartments, and combining therewith arrangements to regulate the draught
to suit each portion of the grid, as herein before described under the first head of 1
our Invention.