Patent ID: 7631943

Claim:
An apparatus for feeding bristles to a brush-making machine, the apparatus comprising: a drum centered on and extending along a drum axis and formed with a plurality of angularly spaced and axially extending passages each of a circularly sectoral cross section with a vertex directed radially inward toward the axis and each having a downstream end and an opposite upstream end; supply means for advancing a respective group of elongated flexible bristles through the upstream ends into each of the passages; means for expelling the groups of bristles from the downstream ends of the respective passages; and a nozzle immediately downstream of the downstream ends and having an outlet aperture of a predetermined inside diameter and a frustoconical inner surface tapering downstream away from the downstream ends and axially aligned with the downstream passage ends such that at least some of the bristles exiting the downstream end of each passage engage and are deflected by the inner surface, the nozzle being replaceable with another such nozzle having an outlet apertures of different size for formation of bristle arrays of different diameters.