AN IMPROVED FLY OR TAKING-OFF APPARATUS FOR PRINTING MACHINES
Year: 1874

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Charles Percy Shrewsbury at
the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on
the 24th September 1874.
I, CHARLES PERCY SHREWSBURY, of Loman Street, Southwark, in the
County of Surrey, Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of the said
Invention for "AN IMPROVED FLY OR TAKING-OFF APPARATUS FOR PRINTING
MACHINES," to be as follows:-
This Invention relates to an improved automatic fly or taking-off
apparatus for printing and other machines for removing the sheets of
paper from the same, and is chiefly designed for use in or in combina-
tion with machines which are fed with continuous paper.
The said Invention consists chiefly in the combination of one or
more flies or flyers, operating in the peculiar manner herein-after
set forth, with a skeleton drum on which the sheets of paper are
received and by which they are presented to the action of the said
flyers.
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I carry my said Invention into practice in the following manner :—
The skeleton drum is mounted upon a shaft carried in suitable bearings
at the end of the machine. The said skeleton drum is provided with

page_text: tapes by which the paper is led on to the same, the paper being kept in
its proper position by margin tapes. The flyers are arms or bars
attached to shafts which extend through the discs of the said skeleton
drum near the periphery thereof, and parallel with its central shaft.
One end of each of the said flyer shafts carries an elliptical toothed
pinion which gears into a similar pinion fixed at the side of a toothed
wheel; the latter turns on a stud or pin projecting from the side of the
disc, and is geared with a similar toothed wheel fixed upon the said
central shaft.
The rotation of the aforesaid skeleton drum around the central shaft
or axis communicates to each of the said flyer. shafts a rotative
movement around its axis in a direction opposite to that of the drum's
rotation. As cach flyer approaches the taking-off board its speed,
through the medium of the above described elleptical gearing, is acce-
lerated until the shaft or axis of this flyer is opposite the said board,
at which moment the flyer is radial to the drum, and the effect of
the compound motion of the drum and flyer arms is that at this par-
ticular moment as the sheet of paper is freed from the tapes the drum
moving onward will leave the same, and the flyer will deposit it upon
the board or pile.
The flyers may be straight, or may have the same curvature as the
periphery of the drum. The latter form may be found preferable, as it
will prevent any tearing of the paper which might occur from the
action of straight flyers on curved sheets of paper. In this case it
will be desirable to make the taking-off board curved or concave on its
surface, but with a slightly larger radius than that of the flyers.
Instead of the aforesaid elliptical wheels I may use any other wheels, or
other gearing or mechanism which will impart to the said flyers an acce-
lerated motion as they approach the taking-off board; and if necessary
I may combine with the said rotary flyers a reciprocating flyer to take
the sheets of paper from the said rotary flyers and deposit them upon
the taking-off board; or I may use a continuous or intermittent blast or.
current of air for the same purpose.