GB598669A - Improvements in or relating to feed magazines for rounds of ammunition - Google Patents

Abstract

598,669. Magazines. HYDRAN PRODUCTS, Ltd., and MOTLEY, L. April 3, 1945, No. 8187. [Class 92 (ii)] A feed magazine for rounds of ammunition comprises a rotatable escapement device which rotates step-by-step and thereby conveys the rounds successively to the firing-position, and means for conveying the rounds successively to said escapement device from a magazine proper. In the construction shown, the rounds 1 are stacked in vertical feed shoots 2, 3, 4, each fitted with a carriage device 14, as in Specification 592,714, for pressing the rounds downwardly. The rounds are thus fed to a space 6 having a floor 7 on which the rounds rest whilst they are fed by a worm 8 to a rotatable feed element mounted in a fixed drum 10. The feed element is divided into compartments by radial vanes 9 and a launching tube 5 extends from one end of the drum. with its axis at 12, Fig. 2. When a firing button is depressed, an electric motor 13 is energized and serves to tension a spring coiled around a shaft 31 which has a chain-and-sprocket connection 34, 36 with the shaft 37 of worm 8, and which is geared to a shaft 40 having a similar connection with the shaft 44 of the feed element. The escapement mechanism comprises a shaft 47 fitted with an arm 49 which passes through a hole 50 in the launching tube, the arm and shaft being biassed into that position by a spring 51. When a round is fired it rocks the arm as it passes down the tube and thereby causes an arm 52 on the shaft to disengage one of four notches 54 in a wheel 53 on the shaft 44. This disengagement enables the feed element 9 and worm 8 to advance under the action of the spring on shaft 31 to feed another round into position, the arm 52 then engaging with the next notch 54. The firing mechanism is substantially the same as that described in Specification 588,920, but is modified in that contacts 55, controlled by arm 52, are provided so as to close the circuit only when the arm is in engagement with a notch 54. In use, the shoots 2, 3, 4, Fig. 2, empty in that order, this result being effected by pivoted devices 21 arranged as shown between the shoots and having surfaces 24 which are urged to a position in which they retain the rounds in one shoot until the adjacent shoot is empty. The devices 21 may be associated with switches in circuit with the carriages and serving to de-energize one motor and to energize another when a compartment has been emptied. Specifications 572,504, 572,510 and 589,177 also are referred to.