GB493132A - Improvements in or relating to supply cables for vehicles and collectors therefor - Google Patents

Abstract

493,132. Electric railways &c. FLINN, H. V. Jan. 1, 1937, Nos. 28 and 5011. [Class 104 (iii)] A current conductor for electric vehicles comprises a plurality of wires 1, 2 insulated from one another by enamel &c. and planed along surfaces a, b to expose the wires to a collector 4, one wire being positive, the other negative. The collector comprises a pair of wheels 4, 5, each consisting of two mutually insulated parts 6, 7, spaced so that each portion always engages areas a or b of the same polarity, the current being transmitted from the pulleys by a pair of slip rings 8, 9 and brushes 10, 11 to wires 13 in the pulley support 12. The two wheels 4, 5 are spaced apart a distance equal to an odd multiple of the distance between adjacent conductive areas a, b, so that while the positive half 6 of one wheel is live, the negative half 7 of the other is live. The two wheels are coupled by a composite connecting rod 14 which connects the corresponding halves of the wheels together. The rod 14 may comprise two conducting bars 19, 20, separated by an insulator 21 and mounted on a bolt 16 which passes through two lugs 15 on the halves 6, 7 of the wheel. The bolt is insulated at 18 from a metal sleeve 17 which conducts current from 6 to 20, while the bolt conducts current from 7 to 19. In the form shown in Fig. 2, the conductor consists of two bare strips 1, 2 of semicircular section twisted together with an insulating tape 25 between. The flanges of the pulley wheels may be insulated and moulded to interact with the irregular surface of the wire as a rack and pinion to keep the wheels in phase with the wires. In another form, two plain undivided pulleys are mounted in insulated relation on a bar which spaces them along the conductor, or the pulleys may contact with the conductor at points exactly opposite each other.