GB199362A - Improvements in and relating to methods of and apparatus for making metal filament incandescent lamps and the like - Google Patents

Abstract

199,362. British Thomson-Houston Co., Ltd., (Assignees of Burrows, W. R.). June 14, 1922, [Convention date]. Making lamps; caps; filaments. - All the mechanisms required for the manufacture of a lamp are assembled together and interlocked so that they work in synchronism, thereby enabling lamps to be completed without the parts cooling between the several stages of manufacture. Apparatus is described for the production of lamps of the kind described in Specification 147,293. A mount-making machine A, a mount-annealing table 34, a hub-making and anchor-inserting machine B, a machine C for sealing the mounts into the bulbs, an exhaust and, if necessary, gasfilling apparatus D, a capping-machine E, and an aging-apparatus F are assembled on a table 18 and are operated in common by two driving-shafts, one rotating intermittently and the other continuously. Operators transfer the parts of the lamps directly from one machine to the succeeding one. A pinching or a soldering appliance is arranged at 60 to enable an operator to attach the filaments to the leading-in wires before assembling the mount in the sealing-in machine C. In this machine, a number of burners 75 keep the bulb heated to expel gases from the glass. The exhaust-machine D comprises a flat rotary valve having a number of ports through which the bulbs are connected alternately to a pump 82 and a nitrogen supply 84, and finally to an argon supply 85, or in the case of vacuum lamps, alternately to a pump and a hot-air supply. After exhaustion the lamps are sealed off by a device 70 of the kind described in Specification 14361/06, the bulb 10 being lifted away from the exhaust tube 17, Fig. 6, when this becomes soft, by a pivoted fork 88 adapted to be rocked by a weight 89 and further lifted by a rod 90. The discarded tubes 17 are pulled out of the supporting-sockets 81 by a finger 92. An operator attaches the caps to the sealed bulbs by means of cement and places them in the device E where the cement is first baked by a double row of gas-burners 97, and the lamps are then cooled by air delivered by pipes 99. The leading-in wires are then soldered to the caps by a torch 103, and the lamps are aged upon the rotating table 105 where successively increased currents are passed through the filaments.