GB174011A - Button attaching machine - Google Patents

Abstract

174,011. Fairweather, W., (Singer Manufacturing Co.). Dec. 1, 1920. Setting buttons; feeding.-In a machine for attaching buttons, particularly of the type described in Specification 175,129, the buttons are fed into a hopper 7, in which revolves an improved feed-wheel 10 on a spindle 9, having teeth 28, of rhomb-shaped cross-section, projecting from the periphery of the wheel so that a line continuous with their advance edges 32 passes in advance of the centre of the wheel. The front edges 32 of the teeth are longer than the rear edges 31, and the spaces 30 between the teeth slope downwards towards the button shoot 26. The teeth therefore make a more obtuse angle with the shoot than if they were radial, and this, coupled with the backward and downward slope of the edges of the feed-wheel between the teeth, ensures smooth feding and minimizes jamming. The teeth gather buttons and deposit them on the inclined feed-shoot 26, which has a groove 27 in which hang some of the shanks. Buttons not so positioned are swept back into the hopper by a finger 74. The buttons leave the feeding-shoot 26 with their shanks hanging downwards in the slot 27 and slide by gravity down the shoot 5, under the cover-plate 6, until arrested by the forked finger 71. The cover-plate 6 has a groove 69<1> to allow the passage of buttons having shanks passed through them and clenched on top. To give the feed-wheel 10 its step-by-step rotary motion, a ratchet wheel 11, Fig. 4, is rigidly secured to the spindle 9, and rotatably mounted on the spindle are two discs 14, 15, Figs. 1 and 2, carrying spring-pressed pawls 12, 13 respectively. The disc 14 is connected to a cam 18 carried by the main shaft 19, by a rod 17, and the disc 15 by a similar rod 16. The pawls act on the ratchet-wheel 11 to turn it in a single direction at each rocking movement of the shaft 19 and cam 18. Pins 24, 25 are secured on the pawls 12, 13 and co-operate with a two-ply disc 22. mounted loosely on the shaft 9 and connected with the hopper lid 8 by a link 23. The two-ply disc has peripheries of different radii and when the lid 8 is raised, thereby rotating the disc, the pins 24, 25 track the peripheries of larger radii as shown in Fig. 4, disengaging the pawls from the ratchet and suspending the rotation of the feedwheel 10.