GB170061A - Improvements in the manufacture of laminated springs - Google Patents

Abstract

170,061. Sanders, T. H. July 3, 1920. Angular bending and curving.-Plant for the continuous manufacture of laminated spring plates and other metal articles requiring similar treatment comprises means for automatically transferring the plates &c. through heating, bending, quenching, and tempering operations. Blanks from a stack 12, Fig.l, are pushed one at a time on to slide-rails 15 in a hardening furnace 14 by a spring-returned ram 10, the charging of one causing the discharge of another down slide rails 16 on to rotatable arms 18, 19 which transfer each plate to the forming machine, which may be of the type described in Specification 159,392. The movements of the ram 10 and of the transferrer arms 18, 19 are controlled from a timing shaft 4 which operates by means of contacts 5, 6 a valve 7 supplying steam or other fluid under pressure to the cylinder 9, which at the end of the stroke of the ram 10 exhausts into a cylinder 21 which operates the transferrer arms. The movement of these arms operates through a lever 27, a twoway valve 28 supplying steam alternately to a cylinder 29 operating the bending dies and to an ejector 33 or a similar device for controlling the level of the quenching liquid in the tank 30. Each plate is delivered by the transferrer arms on to the bottom die 26 of the forming machine, the top die then being forced down by the steam admitted to the cylinder 29, and to prevent distortion the plate is quenched while still between the dies. On steam being cut off from the cylinder 21, the transferrer arms are returned by springs, and in this movement operate the valve 28 so as to cut off steam to the cylinder 29, whereupon the top die 25 is raised by springs or counterweights so as to release the bent and quenched plate. At the same time steam is admitted to the ejector 33, which withdraws the quenching fluid from the tank 30 to the tank 32. The next plate delivered by the transferrer arms displaces the formed plate on to slide-rails 34, which deliver it to a conveyer 35 passing through a tempering furnace 36. The apparatus may be modified for the production of articles other than spring plates by the substitution of any known form of press in place of the spring-forming machine or by the elimination of the quenching tank or of the tempering furnace when tempering is not required.