GB461815A - Improvements in or relating to the manufacture of hollow rubber articles and articles made of sponge rubber - Google Patents

Abstract

461,815. Vulcanizing; moulding hollow rubber articles ; electric heating; making balls for games. KILBORN, K. B. Aug. 24, 1935, No. 23779. [Classes 70 and 87 (ii)] [Also in Groups XI and XV] Relates to a method of vulcanizing hollow rubber articles or sponge rubber articles, e.g. balls and dolls, and to a method of vulcanizing Melton covers to partially or wholly vulcanized tennis balls or sponge rubber balls. According to the invention the rubber articles, or balls having the covers attached by a vulcanizable adhesive, are deposited into moulds carried on an endless conveyer, the moulds are automatically closed and locked during transport thereof and thereafter heated at one or more predetermined temperatures, and finally the moulds are cooled and automatically unlocked and opened and the articles . are removed manually or automatically therefrom. Each open mould 16, Figs. 1 and 2, having a hinged cover 18, is carried by a conveyer 2 past a filling station A, a cam 26 which closes it and a fixed striker 27 which, by impact with a handle 36, rotates an arm 28 and so locks the mould. The mould is then passed through heating baths 8b and 8a (water or low-melting alloys), past water cooling sprays 12 and air-sprays 13, which blow off surplus water, past a fixed striker 21 which unlocks the mould by impact with the handle 37, past a cam 22 which opens it, and finally the articles are knocked out of the mould by a device 23. The moulds may be heated by an electric current induced in the metal conveyer, the heat being localized by short-circuiting the current between two conveyer sprockets 3a 4a, Fig. 6, or the conveyer may be made an electric resistance, current entering by one sprocket 3b, Fig. 7, and leaving by another sprocket 4b.