US2524902A

US2524902A - Timepiece regulator

Info

Publication number: US2524902A
Application number: US670247A
Authority: US
Inventors: Fengler Ferdinand
Original assignee: INGRAHAM E CO
Current assignee: E INGRAHAM Co; INGRAHAM E CO
Priority date: 1946-05-16
Filing date: 1946-05-16
Publication date: 1950-10-10
Anticipated expiration: 1967-10-10

Description

oct. 1o, 195o F. FENG-LER 2,524,902

- 'rInEPIEcE REGULATOR y med nay 1s, 194e Patented Oct. 10, 1950 TIMPIECE REGULATOR Ferdinand Fengler, Bristol, Conn., assignor to The E. Ingraham Company, Bristol, Conn., Va corporation of Connecticut Application May 16, 1946, Serial No. 670,247l

1 Claim. (Cl. 58-109) This invention relates to improvements in time instruments and more particularly to improvements in regulators for time instruments.

Heretofore in time instruments of the marine' or lever-movement type, in which the regulator is pivotally mounted on the frame of the timepiece by one of the pivot-bearings of the balance-stair, it happens not infrequently that in assembling these elements of the timepiece, the pivot-bearing associated with the regulator is inadvertently screwed or forced down into the movement-plate to an extent such that the frictional engagement between the regulating-lever and the head of the pivot-bearing is so great as to preclude any movement whatsoever of the regulating-lever. Consequently, when an attempt is made to adjust the timepiece by moving the regulating-arm, the latter is bent or otherwise distorted, thereby elimihating this highly essential feature of the timepiece. Attempts have been made in the long history of the time-instrument art to overcome this diiliculty as, for example, by introducing a washer between the lever and the head of the pivotbearing, and while a certain'degree of success has been attained, up to the time of the present invention, no completely-satisfactory solution of this problem has been accomplished.

It is, therefore, an object of this invention to provide an improved regulator construction such that the regulator may be adjustably secured to the frame by the regulator-mounting means but without the likelihood of being bound to the frame thereby. f

A further object of the invention is to provide the regulator of a timepiece with segregated resilient means adapted to be cooperatively en- 'tain modes of carrying out the presentinvention are shown for illustrative purposes:

Fig. 1 isla fragmentary plan View of the rear of the frame of a timepiece, including the balance wheel, regulator, and hairspring assembly;

Fig. 2 is a side elevation of the timepiece-frame shown in Fig. l;

Fig. 3 is a sectional elevation of the frame and balance-wheel structure on line 3-3 of Fig. 2;

Fig. 4 is a perspective View of the regulator; f Fig. 5 is a perspective view of the pivot-stud; and

Fig. 6 is an elevational View similar to Fig. 2 but showing the improved regulator used with a conventional pivot-bearing screw.

Referring to the drawings, the frame of the timepiece is indicated generally at IU and comprises front and rear movement-plates I and I2 respectively, joined by pillars I3 in a usual and well-known manner. The balance wheel III is rigidly secured to a balance-staff I5 which, in turn, is pivotally mounted at its opposite ends in pivot-bearings IG and I? of the front and rear movement-plates respectively. In the embodiment shown in Fig. 2, the pivot-bearing I5 of the front movement-plate II comprises a conventional pfivot-bearing screw having a head i8 and an eXteriorly-threaded shank I9, the extremity of which is dished and hardened to provide a bearing-surface. The pivot-bearing I'I of therear plate I2 is a stud having an enlarged head 20, a neck 2l having a stop-shoulder 22 and a depending shank-portion 23, as shown clearly in Figs. 3 and 5. The extremity of the shank 23 is dished and hardened to provide a bearing-surface for the adjacent end of the balance-staff I5. Referring to Fig. 4, the regulator is indicated Lgenerally at 24 and comprises a relatively-thin flat sheet-metal member having a hub-portion 25 substantially circular in shape; and a liat reach or arm 26 formed integrally with the hub-portion of the regulator. The plane which intersects .the longitudinal edges of the arm 26 is substantially at right angles to a horizontal plane through the hub-portion of the regulator (see Fig. 3), this substantially-right-angle relationship between the plane of the arm 26 and the plane of the hub.- portion 25 being secured by 1providing a twist 21 in the arm 2E at its junction with the hub 25. rIhe latter' is provided with a concentric aperture indicated generally at 28, the diameter olf the aperture being relatively large in comparison `with the diameter of the hub-portion 25 of the regulator, so as to form a reatively-narrow annular rim 29. Extending inwardly toward the center of the aperture 28 from the rim 29, are a plurality of resilient radially-disposed ngers 30, the latter being joined integrally at their outer ends with the rim 29 of the hub. The inner free ends of the fingers 30 dene a substantially-circular concentric central aperture 3|, the diameter of which corresponds substantially to the diameter of the neck 2| of the stud Il. As shown in Figs. 3 and 4, the inner free end of each individual resilient finger 3U is elevated above the horizontal plane of the hub-portion 25, the elevated ends of the fingers lying in a common horizontal plane substantially parallel to that of the hubportion 25. Although three radially-disposed resilient lingers 3U are shown in the present embodiment, it will be understood that the number of ngers may be more or less than three, and that an equivalent structure would comprise, for example, a single resilient element extending from one edge of the rim inwardly to the center of the hub, its inner free end being provided with a central aperture to receive the neck 2l of the stud Il. For a structure embodying a relativelylarge number of resilient lingers, the hub of the regulator may comprise a central dished surface provided with a central aperture from which a plurality of radial slots run out to the rim of the hub.

Referring to Fig. Ll, the outer end cf the regulator-arm 25 comprises a substantially-rectangular vane 32 having a V-shaped notch 33 in its outer edge intermediate its upper and lower ends constituting a relief-recess opposite the frame element 34 of the rear movement-plate enable the regulator-arm 26 to be swung clockwise to an extreme right-hand position, ir such an adjustment is necessary. The lower end of the vane 32 is provided with the usual aperture 35 through which passes one of the turns 35 of the hairspring 3l (see Fig. 3) for effecting the adjustment of the balance wheel il! in the manner well known to the art. Y

The regulator 213 is adapted to be mounted on the outer face cf the rear movement-plate l2 and to be secured thereto by the pivot-bearingstud Il, the shank 23 of which is adapted to be driven down into an aperture 33 in the rear movement-plate I2. To facilitate and speed up the assembly of the stud l l, balance wheel l .f3 and regulator 24, the stud is provided with the aforementioned stop-shculder 22, the diameter of which is greater than that of the aperture 38 in the plate l2, as a consequence of which the shoulder 22 limits the extent to which the stud may be driven into the aperture 38. When assembled on the outer face of the rear movement-plate, the inner free ends of the resilient ngers S9 of the regulator frictionally engage the underside of the enlarged head 20 ci the stud Il to effectively hold the regulator 24 in any adjusted position, the rim 29 of the hub-portion of the regulator bearing squarely against the outer face of the rear movement-plate, as clearly shown in Fig. 3. While it is conceivable that the height of the neck-portion 2l cf the stud i? could be made to equal substantially exactly the thickness yof the hub-portion of a conventional regulator so as to preclude the possibility of binding the regulator to the frame when the stud is driven into its assembled position therein, in actual practice this is impracticable not only because of the unwarranted expense which would be involved in machining the studs to within such close tolerances but also because of the occurr-ence or" unpredictable variations in thickness of the stock from which the regulators are made.

The impro-ved regulator fof this invention is adapted to compensate for variations which inevitably occur in the thickness of the stock inaterial from which the regulators are made and in the height of the neck-portion of the stud il. Thus, it will be clear that when the height of the neck-portion 2i of the stud l1 is greater than the thickness of the rim 29 of the regulator, the

i2, toY

elevated inner free endsI of the resilient fingers 30 will frictionally engage the underside of the head 20 of the stud I1 so as to compensate for the increased space between the underside of the enlarged head 20 and the rear face 0f the rear movement-plate I2, to thereby effectively hold the regulator in any predetermined adjusted position thereon. On the other hand, if the height of the neck-portion 2l of the stud is less than the thickness of the rim of the regulator, then the force which would normally act to bind the regulator to the plate will be dissipated, in part, in the distortion of the elevated resilient ngers 30 of the regulator, the lingers 3U being bent downwardly as the stud is driven into place so as to effectively prevent the hub-portion of the regulator from being bound to the rear face of the rear movement-plate by the enlarged headpo-rtion 20 of the stud Il. Moreover, since the surface area presented to the underside of the stud-head by the ends of the segregated independent ngers, is relatively small, frictional engagement of the stud-head 20 with the regulator 24 is minimized, which further precludes any likelihood of the regulator being bound to the rear movement-plate. The inherently-resilient and independently-acting lingers 39 of the regulator thus serve to compensate for slight variations in the thickness of the regulator or in the dimensions of the stud-pivot bearing associated with the regulator, which variations inevitably occur in the mass production oi anything but the most costly precision-built articles.

Referring to Fig. 6, the regulator of the present invention is shown associated with a pivot-bearing 39 of the screw-threaded type. Pivot-bearings of this type are not provided with a stopshoulder or abutment to limit the extent to which the screw may be turned down into a threaded aperture 40 in the rear movement-plate, as a consequence of which the head of the screw is very apt to bind the regulator to the frame. In fact, it has been a characteristic ol this construction that an extremely slight turning,r of the screW-pivot-bearing 39 beyond that required to secure a regulator to the frame for pivotal adjustment thereon, will bind a conventional regulator fixedly to the frame. However, ny providing the improved regulator 24 shown in the drawings, the resilient independent lingers 3G are capable of bending downwardly to automatically compensate for a relatively-large number of rotations of the screw beyond the point where the regulator is frictionally held for rotational adjustment on the frame. Any possibility of binding the regulator to the frame is thereby substantially--and to all practicable purposeseliminated.

The invention may be carried out in other speciiic ways than those herein set forth without departing from the spirit and essential characteristics of the invention, and the present embodiments are, therefore to be considered in all respects as illustrative and not restrictive, and all changes coming within the meaning and equivalency range of the appended claim are intended to be embraced therein.

I claim:

In a timepiece, the combination including: a frame; a balance-wheel; bearing-studs fixed in said frame for pivotally mounting said balancewheel therein, one of said bearing-studs having a neck-portion provided at its outer end with a hanged head and at its inner end with a substantially-square shoulder adapted to seaty on 5 said frame and to hold the said flanged head of said neck-portion positively in spaced relationship to said frame; a hairspring connected to said balance-wheel and to said frame for oscillating said balance-wheel; and a, hairspringregulator comprising an arm having an aperture at the outer end thereof to receive an outer convolution of said hairspring, and a hub-portion at the inner end of said arm lying in a plane at substantially right angles to the plane of said 1 arm, said hub-portion having a central aperture to receive the said neck-portion of said one bearing-stud, and a plurality of integral resilient ngers extending radially into said central aperture and spaced circumferentially therearound, said resilient fingers being arranged to yieldingly engage the underside of the flanged head of the said neck-portion of said bearing-stud to thereby hold the said hub-portion of said regulator-arm REFERENCES CITED The following references are oi record in the le of this patent:

UNITED STATES PATENTS Number Name Date 404,284 Johnson May 28, 1889 1,044,050 Horn Nov. 12, 1912 1,056,364 Porter Mar. 18, 1913 1,785,267 Large et al. Dec. 16, 1930 1,801,999 Bowman Apr. 21, 1931 '2,294,023 Colomb Aug. 25, 1942 2,364,143 Horton et a1 Dec. 5, 1944 2,413,414 Obermaier Dec. 31, 1946