IMPROVEMENTS IN APPLIANCES AND FITTINGS CONNECTED, WITH THE WASHING, BLEACHING, AND DYEING OF TEXTILE FABRICS
Year: 1881

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Duncan Stewart at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents on the 11th February 1881.
DUNCAN STEWART, of the Firm of Duncan Stewart and Company, Engineers, of
the City of Glasgow, in the County of Lanark, North Britain. IMPROVEMENTS
IN APPLIANCES AND FITTINGS CONNECTED, WITH THE WASHING, BLEACHING, AND
DYEING OF TEXTILE FABRICS."
This said Invention has reference to new or improved constructions of revolving.
grooved guide pulleys or revolving wheels, drums, or rollers, for guiding, conducting,
and drawing or pressing textile fabrics (such as yarn or thread and woven or other
fabrics), tied or otherwise attached together in long lengths or "chains," from place
to place through the work to and from vats and machines for treating them in the
process of cleansing, boiling, steaming, bleaching, dyeing, washing, and rinsing or
pressing such fabrics, and all in a more efficient and safe manner than heretofore.
And the nature and novelty of this Invention consist in forming the said
conducting revolving pulleys, wheels, rollers, or drums, or their acting rims or
peripheries, of the materials known by the terms porcelain, pottery, earthen and
stone ware, or it may be of china or glass ware. For the smaller sizes or diameters
they may be made solid in one round piece with disc like webs and eyes, or in two
such like equal parts with flat circular face joint through the centre, secured
together by screw bolts, with a thin layer of india rubber or it might be plaster of
Paris or other cement in the joint, and have brass or other metal bushes bored and
secured in their eyes or centres for strengthening them, and revolving loose on or
securing them to their shafts or centres, which would be mounted in suitable
bearing brackets from wood frames secured to joistings or ceilings of the building
over-head, and these round hole or half disc like pulleys with large annular open
grooves round their periphery for receiving the "chain" of fabric could be run
up from the clay on edge or horizontal potters wheels or be made in moulds (in two
halves as stated) without fins on the grooved working periphery part, which could
thus be made quite smooth and glazed in the baking as other round circular
porcelain wares are; but for the larger sizes or diameters of these new or improved
pulleys the outer peripheries or rims only might be made in one or two parts of
porcelain as stated, having strong bored metal eyes with double arms and kneed
gripping ends, or with two cuped annular disc webs (instead of these arms), having
gripping edges, set in true and concentric while hot in dies, at their outer and inner
n

page_text: periphery so as to enter corresponding annular grooves formed round the two outer
sides or faces of the porcelain rim and the metal eyes, and thus clamp or grip these
firmly between the two outer sets of arms or ring web disc by screw bolts past
through holes in them and nuts outside so as to secure all the parts as true
revolving grooved pullies when mounted on their said shafts or centres overhead.
For the very largest sizes the porcelain peripheries of these new or improved
grooved guide conducting pulleys for textile fabrics are made of the porcelain
material or clay in moulds in short uniform segments of such a number as to
exactly make up the complete annular rim or periphery of the pulley with
concentric grooves in each side, so that when screwed together between the said
cuped web discs by the screw bolts passed through these the whole of the
porcelain segments and parts are all secured to the strong metal bored eye, as
before described, to form in this improved construction also a strong, solid, or
compact grooved pulley very truly turned or moulded, and so smooth on the
working periphery as to be more lasting and uniformly efficient and less severe on
the fabric than the wood and metal guide reel pulleys or stationary porcelain eyes
or other guides heretofore in use. It will also be understood that broad pulleys,
drums, or rollers, with two or more grooves in their outer circumference, might be
constructed and built in an equivalent manner to that last described, but with the
longitudinal stave like segments made of porcelain and secured upon metal rim
centres with arms and eyes in the manner that wooden drums are built. The
porcelain staves might be secured by countersunk brass screws on to the metal ring
centres or by outer metal rings at their ends entering grooves at the ends of the
segments and secured by screws into the metal rings. The metallic parts would
preferably be made of brass, or when iron is used these parts would preferably be
electro-plated with copper or nickel to prevent the chance of staining or injuring
the goods by iron rust which forms very quickly in such circumstances.
Although all these new or improved guiding pulleys or drums for the conducting
of textile fabrics have been described as having their acting peripheries all formed
out of solid or segments of porcelain or stone-ware, by another improvement these
are made with brass or other metal rims and afterwards coated and enamelled in
an oven with porcelain or siliceous earth or material all over their working grooved
or acting peripheries, and then screwed or otherwise fixed by arms or disc webs to
their bored eyes or centres by which they are mounted to revolve loose on or
secured to their revolving driving shafts in the same manner as the new or
improved constructions of porcelain pulleys, drums, or rollers herein before
described.