US2998760A

US2998760A - Drive for intermittently feeding a predetermined length of web material

Info

Publication number: US2998760A
Application number: US17582A
Authority: US
Inventors: Claude V Allen
Original assignee: INTA ROTO MACHINE CO Inc
Current assignee: INTA ROTO MACHINE CO Inc
Priority date: 1960-03-25
Filing date: 1960-03-25
Publication date: 1961-09-05
Anticipated expiration: 1978-09-05

Description

c. v. ALLEN 2,998,760 RMITTENTLY FEEDING A PREDETERMINED Sept. 5, 1961 DRIVE FOR INTE LENGTH OF WEB MATERIAL 4 Sheets-Sheet 1 Filed March 25, 1960 FIG! INVENTOR. CLAUDE M ALLEN Sept. 5, 1961 c. v. ALLEN 2,998,760

DRIVE FOR INTERMITTENTLY FEEDING A PREDETERMINED LENGTH OF WEB MATERIAL 4 Sheets-Sheet 2 Filed March 25, 1960 INVENTOR. CLAUDE V. AL EN C. V. ALLEN RMITTENTLY FEEDING A PREDETERMINE Sept. 5, 1961 DRIVE FOR INTE LENGTH OF WEB MATERIAL 4 Sheets-Sheet :5

Filed March 25, 1960 INVENTOR. CLAUDE V. ALLE p 1961 c v. ALLEN 2,998,760

DRIVE FOR INTERMITTENTLY FEEDING A PREDETERMINED LENGTH OF WEB MATERIAL Filed March 25, 1960 4 Sheets-Sheet 4 CLAUDE V.ALLEN tern can be designed with a sun gear as the main gear instead of the ring gear or in conjunction therewith, but this would involve greater cost and be more space consuming.

A roller 41 is mounted on a stub shaft 42 projecting from pinion 39, as best seen in FIGS. 3 and 4. The roller 41 operates in the slot of a Scotch yoke 43 aflixed at one end of a rack 45, causing the rack to reciprocate as shown by the arrow in FIG. 3. The rack 45 is connected by a suitable gear train, to be hereinafter described, to drive the pairs of

feed rolls

18 and 19 for intermittently advancing the web to the dies 11 and 12.

Preferably, the axis of shaft 42 and roller 41 is on the center line or pitch circle of the teeth of planet gear 39 and ring gear 40, and the pitch circle of ring gear 40 is made exactly twice that of planet gear 39. Under these conditions, 180 rotation of planet gear 39, from its position shown in solid lines in FIG. 4 to the position shown in phantom lines, will move the roller 41 and hence rack 45 a maximum distance, equal to the diameter of the pitch circle of gear 40, in a straight line along a diametrical line E-E which is parallel with the "length of rack 45. Continuation of rotation of gear 39 for another 180 returns the roller to its initial position. Obviously, the use of a sun gear would complicate the design to obtain the maximum and straight line movement of the roller 41. t

In the position illustrated in FIG. 4, the axis of the planet pinion 39 is also on the line E-E when the roller 41 is in its extreme position, that is, in starting position. If, however, the ring gear is first turned so that pinion 39 starts from an initial position in which its center is offset from the line EE, the roller 41 will still move along the diametrical line 13-13 but its length of travel will be reduced and the stroke of the rack 45 will thereby be shortened. This alfords a desirable way for adjusting the length of travel of rack 45 and hence the feed of web 15, as will be more fully explained hereinafter.

Meshing with the gear teeth of rack 45 is a gear 46 keyed to a drive shaft 47 which is coupled to a main.- drive gear 50 by an over-running clutch 48. Thus, referring to FIG. 3, movement of rack 45 toward the right drives gear 50 in the counterclockwise direction. When, however, rack 45 moves toward the left, gear 46 is reversed, but clutch 48 nncouples and gear 50 is not reversed. The set of drive rolls "19 are driven by gear 50 to advance the web 15 by means of spur gear 51 meshing with drive gear 50 and with a spur gear 52. Gear 51 is keyed to the shaft of the lower drive roll 19, while gear 52 is keyed to the shaft of the upper drive roll. A similar set of

gears

53 and 54 drive the pair of feed rolls 18. An overrunning, or backstop, clutch 55 couples gear 54 to the shaft of upper feed roll 18 and insures that the web 15 will remain stationary on the return stroke of rack 45 in spite of any friction in the system.

To prevent the web 15 from advancing further than the positive drive from the rack 45 due to inertia in the system, a brake 56 is included to stop the drive gear 50 upon reversal of the rack. Any suitable brake may be used for this purpose, and it has been found that an electric brake such as the commercial device sold under the trade name Magnabrake by Vickers Electric Division of the Sperry Corporation, is highly efficient for this purpose. This brake comprises two rotating members or surfaces separated by a constant gap having magnetic particles. When the brake stator coil is electrically energized, lines of magnetic force develop which will, by mag netic attraction, stop one rotating member if the other is stopped. In the present invention, the drive shaft 47 is coupled to one brake element and a second shaft 57 is coupled to the other. Drive gear 50 is connected to shaft 57 by gear 58, shaft 59 and gears 60 and 61. Thus, upon reversal of shaft 47, any inertial tendency of gear 50 to continue to rotate is prevented by the operation of 4 brake 56 whose magnetically coupled surfaces are then trying to rotate in opposite directions.

From the foregoing description, it is apparent that the rack 45, when driven in one direction by its planetary gear system, feeds the paper web 15 to the dies by operation of

feed rolls

18 and 19. When the rack is driven in the opposite direction, the feed rolls and the web are stopped. The length of feed in each cycle is directly propontional to the length of travel of rack 45 in one direction. To adjust the length of feed, an arcuate rack 64 is fastened to the outer periphery of ring gear 40 so that the ring gear may be turned by a worm 65. As best shown in FIG. 2, the worm may be operated by a hand wheel 66 affixed to one end of the worm shaft 67. The turning of ring gear 40 by means of the worm 65 changes the initial position of planet gear 39 and thus alters the length of travel of roller 41 which drives the rack 45.

Ihe worm adjustment may be used not only to adjust the feed of the web 15 to a major degree, as changing from 36 inches to 18 inches at the start of an operation, but also to minutely adjust the feed to compensate for small errors during the operation. The latter may be accomplished manually by means of wheel 66 or automatically by suitable control means. A very simple automatic control includes a lever 69 attached to a collar 70 having an integral friction disc 71. The collar 70 and disc 71 are loosely mounted on worm shaft 67 but are frictionally coupled by a friction disc 72 keyed to the worm shaft. Preferably, shaft 67 is split at 73 and the two parts keyed to each other in such manner as to permit the hand wheel and right hand portion of the shaft to be pulled to the right so as to move the disc 72 out of frictional contact with disc 71, thus operatively disconnecting the lever 69 fromthe shaft while the worm 65 is being adjusted manually.

The free end of lever 69 is disposed between a pair of

solenoids

74, 75 and resiliently biased to a central position between the plungers thereof by coil spring 76. The solenoids are connected in parallel across a source of power through a switch 77 arranged to make one, or the other or neither. The switch 77 is actuated by a conventional reflective photocell, or electric eye, circuit generally referenced by block 78, the photocell being designated 79 and positioned above the web 15 between the

feed rolls

18 and 19, as shown in FIG. 1.

The paper being fed to the cutter dies normally bears indicia or markings so that if the feed is too great or too small the electric eye circuit 78 will generate out of register signals of different types or polarity. These out of register signals are used to impulse one 01' the other of

solenoids

74, 75 through a mechanical, electrical or electromagnetic tie between the photoelectric circuit and switch 77. When a solenoid is energized, the lever 69 is moved slightly thereby causing the worm 65 to rotate the ring gear 40 in a direction to correct the advance or feed of the web. After each correction, the springs 76 return the lever 69 to its center position between the solenoids. Thus, the corrective adjustments of gear 40 do not accumulate.

If the machine operator notices that the corrections are occurring too frequently, he may pull hand wheel 66 to disengage the lever 69 from worm shaft 67 and manually turn the worm to a new feed setting which will permanently correct the web feed. Releasing the hand wheel will reengage

frictional couplings

71, 72 to activate the automatic means for fine adjustments through the electric eye system described. In a preferred embodiment, good results are obtained by design of the planetary gearing system and its adjustment worm to provide a web correction of 0.005" with A5 stroke of the solenoid plungers.

A practical embodiment of the planetary gear and rack portion of the described feed-up drive is illustrated in FIGS. 5, 6 and 7. This portion of the drive is here shown enclosed in a circular, pan-shaped housing 80 whose open side is closed by a flat wall 81 of the machine 10. The shaft 36, FIG. 2, for elliptical gear 35 is coupled to the input shaft 36' by coupling 82. The input shaft 36' is journaled in suitable bearings and seals in an opening in casing 80. The crank 37 is constituted by a hub on which the shaft 38 of the planet gear 39 is eccentrically mounted.

The hub 37 is journalled by a bearing 83 in a ring support 84 carried by the ring gear 40 which in turn is journalled in the casing 80 by a bearing 85. The stub shaft 42 carrying roller 41 on an axis in line with the pitch circles of planet gear 39 and ring gear 40 in its extreme positions is supported by a cranklike support arm 86 fastened to planet gear 39. The Scotch yoke 43 is disposed at an angle to the vertical within casing 80, as best shown in FIG. 6, the rack 45 being extended from both sides of the yoke for movement in

bearings

87, 88 secured in diametrically opposed openings in the casing 80.

Also within casing 80, and secured to the ring gear 40 through the intermediate ring support 84, is the arcuate Worm segment 64 in meshing engagement with the worm 65. The worm shaft 67 is journalled in and projects out of the bottom of the casing by means of suitable bearings and seals 89, 90 for operation by means of the hand wheel 66 or a suitable automatic control system. In this embodiment, the automatic electric eye adjustment, previously described, is not shown. The housing 80 is provided with openings for oil fill, oil drain and venting, these be ing normally closed by the usual plugs respectively shown at 92, 93 and 94.

The operation of the improved feed-up drive described above should now be apparent with the following additional clarification. Referring to FIGS. 1-3, particularly, the input to the cutter die eccentrics is arranged to vary from approximately 150 rpm. for feed of a 36 inch sheet to approximately 240 rpm. for an 18 inch sheet. Each rotation, or cycle, of the cutter crank shaft includes about 255 turn while the cutter dies are open for feed of the paper web and about 105 of turn while the dies are closed and the feed is stopped. The timing belt 25, as previously explained, synchronizes the rotation of input gear 28 of the feed-up drive with that of the die eccentric crank shaft.

In the feed-up drive, the operation of

elliptical gears

34 and 35 is such as to drive rack 45 to the right in FIG. 3 during the 255 turn of the die crank shaft to feed the web to the dies. During this portion of the cycle, the paper web is accelerated from stop to about 800 feet per minute during the first 40 turn of elliptical gear 34. This speed is maintained substantially constant during turning of the gear from 40 to about 200", and from 200 to 255 the paper is decelerated from 800 feet per minute to a complete stop. While the elliptical gear 34 completes its turn, i.e., the remaining 105, the gear 35 turns 180 during reversal of the rack 45, but feed of the paper web remains stopped by reason of operation of the overrunning clutch 48 and brake 56.

Small correction adjustments in the feed length of the web may be made manually by the machine operator or automatically by operation of the electric eye system, as previously explained. Moreover, the rack 64 and worm gear 65 also enable major adjustment of the feed length. For example, in a preferred embodiment, an adjustment of nine revolutions of hand wheel 66 is suflicient to rotate the ring gear 40 through 33 and to change the paper feed lengths from 18 inches to 36 inches. It is apparent that the described feed-up drive is highly advantageous in that these adjustments to the feed may be made without stopping the machine to change gears or cams.

As previously stated, the planetary system may include a sun gear, either in place of the planet carrying crank 37, or as a main gear in place of the ring gear 40. In the latter event, the adjustment of the sun gear would effect variation of the feed-up drive. Similarly, other adjustment arrangements may be employed, especially for small corrections, but the rack 64 and worm have the advantage of accuracy and the ability for major adjustment of feed length.

Although certain specific embodiments of the invention have been shown and described, it is obvious that many modifications thereof are possible. The invention, therefore, is not to be restricted except insofar as is necessitated by the prior art and by the spirit of the appended claims.

That which is claimed as new is:

1. In combination with a creasing and blank forming press and press operating means for closing and opening the dies of said press, a drive for intermittently feeding a predetermined length of web material, comprising a pair of feed rolls, a drive gear for said rolls, a drive shaft, an overrunning clutch connecting said drive gear and shaft to turn the gear in one direction only, a pinion on said shaft, a rack engaging said pinion for turning said shaft in two directions, a rotatably mounted ring gear, a planetary gear meshing with and revolvable around said ring gear, a crank on said planetary gear and drivingly connected with said rack, and control means engaged with said ring gear for normally retaining said ring gear stationary but enabling angular adjustment thereof to selectively vary the length of web material fed by each stroke of said rack, and including an arcuate rack aflixed to said ring gear and a worm in mesh with said arcuate rack, drive means connecting said press operating means and said planetary gear to synchronize the feed of Web by said feed rolls with the opening of the press dies, and means for automatically turning said worm to adjust the length of web feed to a predetermined length and in cluding a lever frictionally secured to the worm shaft, a pair of solenoids arranged to move the lever in opposite directions, and photoelectric means disposed near said feed rolls at the entrance of the Web to control operation of one or the other of said solenoids in accordance with the over or under length of Web being fed to the press.

2. A machine according to claim 1 wherein the plungers of said pair of solenoids are connected to said lever by springs normally biasing the lever to a central position.

3. A machine according to claim 2 wherein said lever is disengageable from the Worm shaft by manual means provided for turning said worm and adjusting said arcuate rack.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 657,418 Inman Sept. 4, 1900 1,135,990 Bronander Apr. 20, 1915 2,006,040 Crane June 25, 1935 2,028,145 Coty Jan. 21, 1936 2,054,406 Betts Sept. 15, 1936 2,934,339 Davis et al Apr. 26, 1960