GB586424A - Improved clothes washing machine - Google Patents

Abstract

586,424. Washing-machines. CONSTANTINE, W. W. (General Motors Corporation). Feb. 24, 1945, No. 4672. [Class 138 (ii)] In a clothes washing-machine comprising a tub having mounted in its base a hollow agitator which is outwardly flared at its bottom, a detergent chamber, having a perforate wall in open communication with the tub, is provided in the agitator, a removable cover at the top of the chamber permitting the insertion of the detergent. In the machine shown in Fig. 1, a clothes receptacle 10 and an agitator 11 are adapted to be rotated and reciprocated respectively by an electric motor in a casing 12, the two tubs 13, 14 comprising the receptacle being secured to a sleeve 15 connected to a motor-driven rotatable cage 16 while the sleeve 15 surrounds a shaft 17 secured by a spider 23 to the agitator and reciprocable by mechanism 18. The agitator 11 is formed with a hollow cylindrical chamber 21 containing a screen 22. In operation, the clothes and water are first placed in the receptacle 10, a cover 24 removed from the chamber 21 and soap or other detergent inserted therein and the cover replaced. Thereafter the agitator is reciprocated to dissolve the soap and disseminate it into the water in the receptacle 10 by the action of the water flowing back and forth between the receptacle and chamber 21 through the spider 23 and screen 22. In one modification, the detergent-containing chamber communicates through holes in its periphery with the receptacle, and, in another, the chamber is formed of rubber and is made separate from the remainder of the agitator. In another construction, Fig. 4, 5, the agitator 11c is rotatably oscillatable, though a combined vertical and rotary oscillation may be produced if desired. Hollow radial vanes 30 aid in agitating the clothes and one or more radial or spiral vanes 33 may also be placed inside the chamber 21c into which the detergent is introduced after unscrewing the cover 24c. Upper and lower openings 31, 32 are formed in the agitator proper and other openings 32c in the vanes 30 to permit circulation of the water and dissemination of the dissolved soap. In a modification, the chamber for containing detergent is arranged at the bottom of the agitator between the radial vanes.