IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR WASHING, SOAPING, AND OTHERWISE TREATING WOVEN FABRICS
Year: 1883

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Edward James Jones at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 30th January 1883.
EDWARD JAMES JONES, of the firm of James Black and Company, Calico
Printers, of Dalmonach Works, in the County of Dumbarton, North Britain.
"IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR WASHING, SOAPING, AND OTHERWISE TREATING
WOVEN FABRICS
"
This Invention has for its object to improve the construction and action of
apparatus for washing, soaping and otherwise treating woven fabrics. In the
improved apparatus several successive operations are combined as in existing
apparatus of the same class, but in a better and more convenient manner than
heretofore, the entire apparatus being rendered less costly and much more compact.
The woven fabric is passed in succession through separate compartments combined
in one tank, being treated with water or soaping or other liquors in some of the
compartments and being subjected to an improved washing operation in compart-
ments alternating with or following the other compartments.
In the first compartment or that through which the fabric first passes there are
upper and lower rows of guide rollers round which the fabric is led so as to form a
series of vertical lines or folds; and on its passage up and down the fabric is or
may be acted on by rotating winces of square or other form which beat the fabric
or cause it to vibrate. In the second compartment the fabric is led round the
outer sides of a series of rotating winces or beaters these winces being arranged in
a circular series round a cylinder of copper or other suitable material. The cylinder
and a somewhat smaller one inside of it are fixed to end disks made with hollow
trunnions and carried by their means in bearings on the framing. An annular
cylindrical space is thus formed between the cylinders and this space is put in
communication with one or both of the trunnions by radial passages in the end
disk or disks, whilst perforations are formed in the outer cylinder. Water or
other liquid for washing or treating the woven fabric is admitted under suitable
pressure through one or both of the trunnions into the annular cylinder and
issuing from the perforations in powerful jets acts effectively on the fabric passing
round outside of the winces. The cylinder is made to rotate and drives the winces
by means of a ring' of spur teeth on it gearing with pinions on the spindles of the

page_text: winces; or the cylinder may be stationary whilst the winces are carried round by
end frames or disks. In one modification of the apparatus five of the cylinders
each with its encircling series of winces are combined in a lower row of three with
the remaining two above them. The fabric is led round the various cylinders in
the manner usually adopted with two tiers of drying cans or in any other suitable
manner and is subsequently passed between squeezing rollers. The water or the
soaping or other liquor descends from the woven fabric into the compartments of
the tank, and the same soaping or other liquor may be raised by pumps or other
elevating apparatus so as to be projected from the cylinders against the woven
fabric over and over again.