IMPROVEMENTS IN SELF-ACTING MULES
Year: 1872

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Hunter Henry Murdoch at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
2nd October 1872.-A communication from abroad by Messieurs
Bède and Company, Engineers, of Verviers, Belgium.
I, HUNTER HENRY MURDOCH, of No. 7, Staple Inn, in the County of
Middlesex, Patent Agent, do hereby declare the nature of the said
Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN SELF-ACTING MULES," to be as follows :—
Hitherto motion to self-acting mules has been communicated by
means of a train of large toothed wheels, in some cases as many as
sixteen wheels have been used for this purpose, causing breakages and
shocks, and consequently considerable noise and wear. The object of
this Invention is to substitute for the said wheel gearing five pulleys'
actuated by one single cord or rope three quarters of an inch thick,
which cord or rope is made to pass twice round each of the said pulleys.
By this means all slipping of the said cord or rope is prevented, and the
strain it has to support does not exceed one-fifteenth of what it could.
bear without injury, at the same time the machine works more steadily,

page_text: without noise, and without the frequent stoppages attendant on the
breakage of a single tooth of one of the wheels.
Also according to this Invention the spinning or twist motion is
unconnected with the winding process, and a peculiar arrangement of
the part called the cam shaft, herein-after described, prevents the
injurious shocks which occur during the winding-on motion in all
mules constructed with a spindle stop motion.
A large pulley upon a suitable driving shaft gives' motion to the main
pulley on the head stock, which gives the running-out motion to the
carriage. A second smaller pulley on the said driving shaft gives 1
motion to a pulley affixed on the nave of a cord pulley provided with a
friction clutch, which pulley gives the winding-on motion. The said
friction clutch is made to gear with the said cord pulley by the cam
shaft performing half a revolution, and a cam upon the said cam shaft
releasing a lever connected with the said friction clutch, a spring on the 1
friction pulley shaft then causing the said friction clutch to engage with
its pulley. The cam shaft consists of a long tube upon which are a
series of cams for governing the motion to the self-acting parts of the
mule; the said cam shaft makes one half revolution at each change of
motion of the mule, it is mounted on an inner shaft, one end of which 2
has keyed upon it a cord pulley in front of the mule, which pulley gives
continuous rotatory motion to the said inner shaft, intermittent rotatory
motion to the said cam shaft being transmitted therefrom by a suitable
clutch box, one half of which clutch box is affixed to the inner shaft,
and the other half to the cam shaft. Upon the said cam shaft is formed ?
or fixed a projecting slide for stopping the spindles, which slide on the
running out of the carriage comes in contact with the end of a lever on
the carriage, which lever being moved aside, the said slide throws out of
gear the clutch through which motion is given to the spindles on the
return or running in of the carriage; the cam shaft with its projecting
slide will have performed half a revolution, the said slide being thus
removed out of the way of the said lever on the carriago.
A cord or rope pulley is affixed to the backing-off shaft at the upper
part of the frame; the driving cord or rope passes twice round the said
pulley, and from thence it is conducted by a suitable guide pulley to the
pulley herein-before described, governing the cam shaft; from thence the

page_text: said cord or rope passes round a second guide pulley, and finally round
the lower cord pulley giving the winding-on motion; from the last
named cord pulley the said cord or rope passes on to the pulley on the
backing off shaft as herein-before described; the said guide pulleys are
capable of adjustment so as to give the required tension to the said cord
or rope.