IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR MAKING PAPER BAGS
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Edwin Powley Alexander at the
A
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 14th May 1880.
communication from abroad by Jules Adolphe Najean, Merchant, César
Hippolyte Capet, Engineer, and Joan Antoine Frederic Joubert, Builder, all of
Paris, in the Republic of France.
EDWIN POWLEY ALEXANDER, of 14, Southampton Buildings, in the County of
Middlesex, Consulting Engineer, and British, Colonial, and Foreign Patent Agent.
"IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR MAKING PAPER BAGS." A
communication from abroad by Jules Adolphe Najean, Merchant, César Hippolyte
Capet, Engineer, and Jean Antoine Frederic Joubert, Builder, all of Paris, in the
Republic of France.
This Invention relates to a peculiar construction and arrangement of machinery
or apparatus for making that class of paper bags which are provided with square
ends, whereby the rate of production is greatly increased, whilst a neater and more
perfect article is obtained.
According to this Invention a number of mandrels or formers are attached to a
rotary plate, each of which corresponds to a different operation in the process of
manufacture, as, for example, the cutting of the paper or other material employed,
the folding of the sides of the bag over the mandrel, the folding and cementing of
the bottom or end of the bag, the pressing of the cemented end folds, the
withdrawal of the bag from off the mandrel, and its transfer to the flattening and
printing appliances. By thus dividing the several operations, as many as seven
bags can be passing through their different stages of manufacture in the same
machine at one and the same time, the rate of production being from fifty to sixty
bags per minute.
The means employed for supplying or feeding the machine with the required
amount of paper or other like material for the manufacture of each bag is also
improved, it being so arranged as to act across the entire width of the paper,
whereby all the disadvantages arising from unequal traction, when such traction is
applied only to the middle or edges of the paper, are obviated. The apparatus for
flattening the otherwise finished bags is also greatly improved, and the appliances
for printing the side of the bag are disposed at the rear end of the machine, so that
the impression produced shall not be liable' to be smeared or blurred by the
subsequent action upon the paper of any of the operating parts of the machine.
At the front end of the machine there are mounted two rolls of paper which may
be used together or separately, according as the bags are simple or double; also, the
roller for cementing the edge of the paper as fast as it is fed into the machine; also,

page_text: a cutter for severing the length of paper required for each bag, behind which there
is mounted in a cross bar, capable of a slight up and down motion, a plate provided
at equal distances round its circumference with a number of mandrels or formers (in
the present case, six), of a shape suited to the contour of the bag to be produced.
Beneath the table or bedplate of the machine are disposed the various levers and
cans required for actuating the different parts hereinafter referred to.
The paper rolls are caused to deliver intermittently the requisite length of paper
to form a bag by the action of other rollers upon which they rest, driven by an
arrangement of endless bands and ratchet clutches, which at the same time impart a
corresponding motion to the actual drawing off or feeding rollers. These latter
rollers operate across the entire width of paper, and thus ensure a perfectly even
and regular feeding of the paper. The edge of the paper is gummed by means of a
roller driven by friction from the upper one of the feed rollers, and taking a
regulated supply of gum from a gum box provided with an adjustable opening or
discharge mouth.
Immediately behind the feeding rollers there is provided a transverse cutter for
cutting off a length of paper sufficient for form a bag. The lowest of the series of
mandrels is caused to press down upon and hold the paper during the time it is
being severed, and whilst the severed blank is being folded over the said mandrel,
which latter operation is effected by means of a folder in the form of an open box,
which slides sideways onto the mandrel from below upwards, the two edges of such
box in their ascent turning up the ends of the blank over the opposite sides of the
mandrel. One of the sides of this box has a hinged flap at its upper edge, which
flap is turned over by a spring so as to fold down one edge of the paper onto the
top of the mandrel, the opposite or gummed edge being then folded over the first
by the passage across it of an india rubber roller actuated by a lever and slide.
The paper is by this time completely folded round the sides of the mandrel, and is
caused by the action of two rubber rollers attached by blade springs to the box to
receive the action of knives formed on the mandrel for the purpose of preparing it
for the ulterior operation of flattening. Two spring folders form the top and bottom
folds of the end of the bag, and at this time the rotary plate makes a partial
rotation by the aid of a ratchet and pall motion, so that the mandrel and partially
formed bag will be moved from the lowest or original position, which I will call
No. 1, to the next position, or No. 2. Here, two other spring folders similar to the
last and carried by lever arms complete the bottom of the bag by making the two
side folds, and a selfacting gummer applies the gum to the folds not yet completed,
a fresh mandrel having been brought in the meantime into the position No. 1.
The plate again turns and the mandrel takes the position No. 3, where the end
folds of the bag are pressed down by a pad and the gum is dried. The plate, which
turns partly round after each operation, now brings the mandrel and bag to the top
position, No. 4, whero it is withdrawn from the mandrel, and caused to enter the
Hattener by the descent of a rubber roller mounted on the end of a lever arm and
rotated by a cord or chain. The flattener consists of two horizontal plates, the
upper one being fixed, and the lower one (which is much shorter) moveable
vertically. So soon as the bag enters between these plates the lower one rises and
flattens it, a knife, lifted at the same time as the lower plate, to which it is
connected by a telescopic tube, then moves horizontally and pushes the bag between
a pair of pressing rollers which deliver it onto the printing table, where it receives
any required impression from a suitable printing device.
The completed and printed bag is then conveyed by an endless apron to an incline
plane, whence it falls into any convenient receptacle.