IMPROVED MACHINERY FOR REDUCING RAGS AND CONVERTING THE FIBRES RECOVERED THEREFROM INTO SLIVER
Year: 1871

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to William Edward Newton, of the Office for
Patents, 66, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex, Civil
Engineer, for the Invention of "IMPROVED MACHINERY FOR REDUCING
RAGS AND CONVERTING THE FIBRES RECOVERED THEREFROM INTO SLIVER."-
A communication from abroad by Julien Hayem, of Paris, France.
Scaled the 23rd January 1872, and dated the 29th August 1871.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said William Edward
Newton at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his
Petition, on the 29th August 1871.
I, WILLIAM EDWARD NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery
Lane, in the County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer, do hereby declare
the nature of the said Invention for "IMPROVED MACHINERY FOR REDUCING
RAGS AND CONVERTING THE FIBRES RECOVERED THEREFROM INTO SLIVER," to be
as follows:-
The object of this Invention is to tear up or reduce woven or other
rags or waste pieces so as to obtain the fibres in a separated and divided
state in order that they may be spun into threads and woven or other-
wise made up again into fabrics.

page_text: To this end the rags or waste pieces are placed upon an endless
travelling cloth and carried forward to two grooved rollers which hold
them while they are being acted upon by another pair of rollers armed
with teeth or points, and which as they are driven at a greater speed
than the grooved rollers will tear up the rags into separate threads.
These shreds are carried forward by the tearing rollers to a third set of
rollers which are of larger size and travel at an increased speed. These
rollers are armed with elastic teeth which enter between the points of
the tearing rollers, and by their more rapid motion draw out therefrom
the fibres they contain. These fibres are afterwards removed from the
large rollers in the form of a sliver by means of combs, and are con-
ducted to a trumpet, from whence they are drawn by a pair of plain
rollers and deposited in a can or on a travelling cloth.
SPECIFICATION in pursuance of the conditions of the Letters Patent,
filed by the said William Edward Newton in the Great Seal Patent
Office on the 29th February 1872.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, WILLIAM
EDWARD NEWTON, of the Office for Patents, 66, Chancery Lane, in the
County of Middlesex, Civil Engineer, send greeting.
WHEREAS Her most Excellent Majesty Queen Victoria, by Her
Letters Patent, bearing date the Twenty-ninth day of August in the year
of our Lord One thousand eight hundred and seventy-one, in the thirty-
fifth year of Her reign, did, for Herself, Her heirs and successors, give
and grant unto me, the said William Edward Newton, Her special
licence that I, the said William Edward Newton, my executors, adminis-
trators, and assigns, or such others as I, the said William Edward
Newton, my executors, administrators, and assigns, should at any time
agree with, and no others, from time to time and at all times thereafter
during the term therein expressed, should and lawfully might make,
use, exercise, and vend, within the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, the Channel Islands, and Isle of Man, an Invention for
"IMPROVED MACHINERY FOR REDUCING RAGS AND CONVERTING THE FIBRES
RECOVERED THEREPROM INTO SLIVER," being a communication to me from
abroad by Julius Hayem, of Paris, France, upon the condition
(amongst others) that I, the said William Edward Newton, my executors

page_text: or administrators, by an instrument in writing under my, or their, or
one of their hands and seals, should particularly describe and ascertain
the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same was to
be performed, and cause the same to be filed in the Great Seal Patent
Office within six calendar months next and immediately after the date
of the said Letters Patent.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said William Edward Newton, do hereby
declare the nature of the said Invention, and in what manner the same
is to be performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and
by the following statement, reference being had to the Drawing
hereunto annexed, and to the letters and figures marked thereon (that
is to say) :-
The object of this Invention is to tear up or reduce woven or
other rags or waste pieces so as to obtain the fibres in a separated and
divided state in order that they may be spun into threads and woven or
otherwise made up again into fabrics.
To this end the rags or waste pieces are placed upon an endless
travelling cloth and are carried forward to two grooved rollers which
hold them while they are being acted upon by another pair of rollers
armed with teeth or points, and which as they are driven at a greater
speed than the grooved rollers will tear up or unravel the rags into
separate threads, and then these threads by the rapid and continued
rotation of the toothed rollers will be disintegrated and the fibres will be
properly separated. These disintegrated fibres will be carried forward
by the tearing rollers to a third set of rollers which are of larger size
and travel at an increased speed. These latter rollers are armed with
clastic teeth which enter between the points of the tearing rollers, and
by their more rapid motion draw out therefrom the fibres they contain,
and thus continually act as cleaners to the tearing rollers. A portion of
the disintegrated fibres will fall into a box below, but the greater portion
will adhere to the clearing rollers, and are afterwards removed from
these rollers in the form of a sliver by means of vibrating combs or
doffers, and are conducted to a trumpet from whence they are drawn by
a pair of plain rollers and deposited in a can or on a travelling cloth.
Many attempts have heretofore been made (and some of them with a
certain amount of success) to tear up or reduce woollen rags to a state
of fibre so that such fibres may be used again in the manufacture of

page_text: .
fabrics. It has hitherto however been found impracticable to reduce
rags made from other substances, such as silk, cotton, or linen, to the
state of disintegrated fibre, except at a cost altogether disproportionate
to the result produced.
The machine which forms the subject of the present Invention, is
intended to effect this object in an economical manner, and it is shewn
in detail in the accompanying Drawing in which Fig. 1 is a plan view
of the machine, and Fig. 2 is a longitudinal vertical section of the same
taken in the line A, B, of Fig. 1. Figures 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 represent
various arrangements of parts for feeding forward the rags to the
working rollers, and Fig. 8 is a modification of the disintegrator in
which only one tearing roller of large diameter is employed.
This machine is composed (1) of a feeding apparatus, (2) of a set of
ravelling or tearing rollers, (3) of strippers, and (4) of combs or doffing
mechanism, and drawing-off rollers.
The feeding apparatus consists of an endless apron T, made of leather,
cloth, linen, scaleboard, or other suitable material, actuated by the
rollers a, Figures 1 and 2.) The rags or material to be operated upon
are placed on this endless travelling apron, and are fed forward by the
rotation of the rollers a, a, to the bite of the holding cylinders b, b, 2
Fig. 2, the upper of which is actuated by the lower and is pressed
against the lower by weights or other equivalent devices.
I reserve to myself, according to the nature and length of the fabrics
to be operated upon the right of varying the number of the rollers and
the construction of the feeding mechanism. For example, I propose to 2
employ after the endless cloth T either small fluted cylinders, as shewn
at c, d, Fig. 3, or carding rollers, as shewn at B, Fig. 4, or a double pair
of rollers a, b, as shewn at Fig. 5, which will allow less material to
escape the action of the working rollers. Or the arrangement shewn at
Fig. 6 may be employed in which the endless apron feeds the material a
forward to two small rollers which conduct it to a roller K, which turns
in a fixed trough placed concentrically thereto, and which allows of the
material (to be operated upon) being brought as near the tearing
apparatus as possible.
Fig. 7 shows an arrangement consisting of two lower rollers against a
which a third roller placed tangentially above them presses. I have
described these different modes of working for the purpose of pointing

page_text: out that I wish to reserve to myself the most appropriate means of
feeding in the materials to be treated.
The material whether in the form of fragments or threads is fed as
close as possible and at an appropriate speed to the ravelling or tearing
cylinders c, c. The ravelling apparatus consist of the two rollers c, c,
which are furnished with rows of radial needles or needles fixed at an
angle to the surface of the rollers; these needles or steel points may be
of any suitable length according to the nature of the material to be
operated upon. The ravelling rollers c are arranged as shewn in the
longitudinal section, Fig. 2, in which it will be seen that the points or
needles of the two ravelling rollers c, c, interlock or take into one
another so that the points of one roller come nearly into contact with
the surface of the other roller. Their relative positions are therefore
those of cog wheels, the teeth of one of which gear into the intervals or
spaces of the other. By reason of this arrangement and combination of
rollers, some being furnished with sharp pointed needles either solid and
elastic, while the others are simply holding or stripping rollers, and all
rotating with a greater or lesser speed, some for example rotating forty
times faster than the feed rollers, and the needles taking into the weft
or the warp according to the direction in which the material is fed to
the ravellers, I obtain an analogous result to that produced by the
ordinary combing process.
In fact as the needles enter into and pierce
the threads of the weft and warp it follows that the threads are not only
unravelled or unwoven, but they are completely untwisted and opened
out and their fibres separated. If however it should be found that the
threads have not been sufficiently unravelled and the fibres properly
separated by one passage through the machine they may be passed
through a second time. Or the machine might be composed of two or
more sets of ravellers placed one after the other, or their relative
positions may be modified by grouping sets of ravelling rollers round a
large rotating cylinder.
Cleaning or Stripping Apparatus. As the ravelling or tearing rollers.
must travel in certain cases at a very high speed to produce the desired
result, the disintegrated or separated fibres would tend to adhere to the
circumference of the rollers and choke up the spaces between the needles
if some means were not employed for cleaning them and removing the
fibres from the teeth. To effect this object I place near each needle or

page_text: ravelling roller the cleaning rollers or strippers d, d', and each of these
latter rollers is provided with small teeth or straight elastic pins h, h, of
curved or rectangular form, and made of iron, steel, or other suitable
material. One, two, three, or four rows of thin teeth may be used at
pleasure. These teeth or pins may be of the same length or a little
longer than the needles j, and they are made to take closely in between
the needles of the ravellers, and as they have a more rapid rotary motion
than the ravellers they will free them from the fibres and at the same
time throw some of these fibres into a box; a portion however of the
fibres remain around the circumference of the clearing cylinders. These
fibres are then removed from the cleaning cylinders by hand or by
ordinary saw tooth combs 8, to which is imparted a vibrating motion.
Slivers R, Fig. 2, will thus be formed, and will be conducted through a
trumpet or funnel E, from whence they pass between the drawing-off
rollers o, o.
The operation of the machine is most simple, and the working parts
are actuated by the driving pullics P, P, (fast and loose) which receive
motion by means of a band from the motive power engine. Rotary
motion is thus imparted to the shaft r of the lower tearing or ravelling
roller c¹, upon the axle of which is mounted a tooth wheel
1, which
takes into a similar wheel q', made fast to the shaft of the upper
ravelling roller c, so that these rollers may rotate at equal speed. To
actuate the grooved rollers and 6' a worm or endless screw p placed
upon the shaft r takes into a worm wheel o, which transmits motion
to the bevil wheels m, n. The wheel m is fixed on the axle of one of
the grooved rollers b, and imparts motion thereto. The motion of the
strippers d, d, is obtained from the wheels q, q', which actuate the
wheels r, r, by means of an intermediate wheel as indicated in Fig. 2.
And, lastly, the delivery combs 8, 8, receive their vibrating motion
direct or otherwise from a pulley x to which a crank is made
fast, which gives a vibrating or reciprocating motion to the rods of the
combs 8, 8.
I do not limit myself to these particular arrangements for transmitting
motion to the different parts of the machine, and they may be varied.
What is most essential is regulating the speeds of the working parts
of such like machines so that the relative speed of the cleaner may be
adjusted to the speed of the other parts, as the desired speed must

page_text: necessarily vary according to the different materials intended to be
operated upon.
As materials entirely different in their nature will have to be operated
upon it is necessary so to regulate the speed of the different parts of the
machine as to obtain the best result. To this end the bearings of the
rollers are so arranged as to admit of sliding in the framework so as to
be moved nearer towards or further from each other, so that the driving
gear may be altered and their speed modified as required.
The pressure of the different rollers can also be adjusted at will by
means of screws or weights in the well known manner.
Multiple or Many-headed Machines.-As machines of this kind do not
require much space, propose to mount a certain number of heads upon
the same framing, and to actuate them all by a general motor, such for
example as is used for drawing frames.
Another form of ravelling machine is shewn in vertical section at
Fig. 8, and represents a somewhat different combination of parts.
Instead of two needle or tearing cylinders taking the one into the
other, I use but one C, of a greater diameter and consequently
furnished with a proportionately larger number of needles. The
dimensions of this ravelling cylinder will (in order to make the machine
work in the best possible manner) necessitate a modification of the
arrangements of the feed apparatus so..as to lead up the ends of the
fabrics or threads as near as possible to the needles j of the drum C.
This feeding apparatus is composed (1) of an endless apron T¹, (2) of a
metallic or wooden cylinder which forms the axle of the small india-
rubber or elastic washers H, (3) of a pressing roller P, (4) of a guard
plate and regulating guide G..
The material to be disintegrated, whether consisting of silk, cotton,
wool, or other fabric, is placed upon the feeding apron T¹, which feeds
up the pieces (of whatever size) between the rollers H and P. The
roller H by reason of its motion drags the pieces towards it and spreads-
them regularly over its surface and on the concave portion of the
plate G. The picces are thus brought up piecemeal to the large
ravelling or tearing cylinder C. If the diameter of this cylinder C and
the number of its revolutions be suitably adjusted, the centrifugal force
will suffice to throw off the ravelled fibres and thus strip the ravelling
roller C. In case this object be not properly effected any of the

page_text: arrangements of apparatus already described for cleaning the tearing
or ravelling cylinder may be used.
The working of the machine and the number of operations will vary
according to circumstances, such as the resistance of the fabrics to be
worked and the degree of perfection it is desired to attain. In the case
of more than one operation being required it will be necessary to employ
a series of machines in which the number and the fineness of the needles
will be increased progressively from the first to the other machines, so
that the rags having been once unravelled will meet upon their second
passage sharper and closer needles, and so on according to the number
of ravelling or tearing rollers employed.
Having now described the Invention which has been communicated
to me as aforesaid, and having explained the manner of carrying the
same into effect, I claim, as the Invention secured to me by Letters
Patent as aforesaid, the general combination, arrangement, and con-
struction of parts herein set forth, for unravelling or tearing up rags or
pieces of textile fabrics and separating the fibres of which they are
composed.
I. claim particularly the use of two cylinders armed with teeth or
points which by interlocking will take hold of and draw out the fibres
from the rags while they are being held by rollers or their equivalents,
as above described.
I also claim the use of a single large cylinder armed with teeth or
points as aforesaid, in combination with feeding mechanism and holding
rollers, as and for the purpose herein set forth and described in reference
to Fig. 8.
In witness whereof, I, the said William Edward Newton, have
hereunto set my hand and seal, the Twenty-ninth day of
February, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred