IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF STEAM BOILERS
Year: 1876

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Gustave Piedboeuf, of Tupille, near the City of Liego, in
the Kingdom of Belgium, and of 14, Delahay Street, Westminster, in the
Kingdom of Great Britain, Engineer, for the Jnvention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN
APPARATUS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF STEAM BOILERS."
ealed the 3rd November 1876, and dated the 6th May 1876.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Gustave Piedboeuf at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents on the 6th May 1876.
GUSTAVE PIEDBŒUF, of Tupille, near the City of Liège, in the Kingdom of
Belgium, and of 14, Delahay Street, Westminster, in the Kingdom of Great Britain,
Engineer. "IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF STEAM
BOILERS."
This Invention consists in apparatus for bending, shaping, or flanging metallic
plates by hydraulic pressure, such plates to be used more especially in the manu-
facture of steam boilers.
These improvements are more particularly applicable to the manufacture of fire
and smoke box tube plates and similar uses; I am thereby enabled to flange any
required shapes or sizes of such tube plates, and to produce the requisite moulds at
less cost than heretofore.
In the form of iny plate bending press I prefer to employ the main hydraulic
plunger or ram works from below in a suitable cylinder fixed in a strong base
plate, and the said ram is connected to a head plate guided up and down by coluinns
carrying the top framing, fitted with a fixed head plate. To this head plate are
suitably attached the improved dies, to be more particularly described further on.
On the moveable head plate of the main flange are set supports for carrying
tubular or hollow matrix. This matrix is supplemented by. an independent move-
able bottom, carried by four, more or less, small independent plungers.
n
The plate to be bent is held up against the fixed die at top by means of two
small adjustable plungers acting directly or upon the moveable bottom of the
matrix itself, impelled upwards by the main plunger_flanges the outer edges as it
passes up round the die.

page_text: The cylinders of these small auxiliary plungers are not fixed to the main press
cylinder, but are adjustable radially, the water under pressure being conveyed to
them by means of adjustable flexible pipes. Further, in order to be able to give
the plate to be shaped the full pressure, and to be able to shape all kinds of plates,
the said auxiliary plungers can be keyed to the head plato of the main plunger,
suitable slots for the purpose being formed in the said plungers.
Instead of making the moulds for flanging or bending round the edges of the fire
box and smoke box tube plates of locomotives, portable engines, and of similar parts
of the boilers in one single casting, I make them in two, three, or more separate
pieces bolted or otherwise held together. By these means I can adapt the separate
pieces to a number of shapes and sizes as required, and am not obliged to make
fresh castings for each class of work.
When I use a hydraulic press with the main plunger working overhead, I employ
a number of small auxiliary plungers, as described, but with their cylinders ad-
justable on the bottom framing or base plate. As the main plunger descends the
water is driven back out of the small cylinders.