US3153274A - Method of spool-setting - Google Patents

Description

Oct. 20, 1964 Filed May 10, 1962 s. F. TOWNSEND 3,153,274

METHOD OF SPOOL-SETTING 4 Sheets-Sheet 1 Fig.1.

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19M FLETCHER EWNSEND diwiiwx m A 77081145 KS Oct. 20, 1964 s.,F. TOWNSEND 3,

' METHOD OF SPOOL-SETTING Filed May 10, 1962 i 4 Sheets-Sheet 2 UNIT 48 UNIT47 UNIT 2 UNIT I awn/Tog Sn: it ETCH Efi o uugsuj Oct. 20, 1964 s. F- TOWNSEND 3,153,274

METHOD OF SPO0L-SETTING Filed May 10, 1962 4 Sheets-Sheet 3 Fig.5.

nvvew 7'02 3M1 FLETCJ-IEQ FQNSEN] JZMJJJM Oct. 20; 1964 Filed May 10, 1962 S. F. TOWNSEND METHOD OF SPOOL-SETTING -4 Sheets-Sheet 4 m l s-wrog SAM T an 'lwuse/vj United States Patent 3,153,274 METHOD OF SPOOL-SETTING Sam F. Townsend, Halifax, England, assignor to John Crossley and Sons Limited, Halifax, England, a company of Great Britain Filed May 10, 1962, Ser. No. 193,723 Claims priority, application Great Britain, May 16, 1961, 17 ,803/ 61 14 Claims. (Cl. 28-725) The present invention relates to improvements in or relating to spool setting.

The present practice in setting-up the spools which are very widely employed in the weaving of Axminster carpets is for a creel to be loaded with a plurality of bobbins each containing yarn of one of the desired colours and the yarn from all of the bobbins is drawn up through a sley and secured to and wound upon a spool. It is essential, of course, to maintain the colour sequence which is determined for the operatives setting-up the spools by a pattern drawn on squared paper, one horizontal line of the squares thereon representing one transverse row in the finished carpet. When one spool has been set-up, the threads of yarn are gripped in a clamp and guard near to the spool itself in order to ensure that the correct colour sequence is not lost or destroyed, the said threads are cut or broken and the free ends are thereafter threaded through a tube frame whereupon the comb is removed.

Ignoring the fact that, in practice and for obvious reasons, more than one spool is wound with yarn in any one colour sequence, upon completion of these tasks the operatives remove the filled spool and place an empty spool on the winding mechanism and then, after adjusting a cursor down one line to pick up the next horizontal line of squares on the pattern, the colour sequence of the yarn threads employed when setting up the last spool is checked thread by thread against the colour sequence of the corresponding squares on the pattern. Where the colour of the existing yarn thread is the same as that indicated in the square of the pattern, the free end of the thread may be fastened to the spool preparatory to winding, but, where a difference is noted between the colour of a thread and the corresponding square on the pattern, the thread has to be taken back to and rewound on the bobbin, the bobbin is removed from the creel and .is replaced by one holding yarn of the required colour and the free end of the yarn on the bobbin is brought through the sley up to the spool and secured thereto. This operation is repeated across, for example, the 27" width of the spool, there being seven threads to the inch making a total of 189 threads to the spool. When the colour sequence has been thus checked, the winding mechanism is started and, for example, 32 feet of yarn are wound on to the spool.

It is the principal object of the present invention to speed-up this spool-setting operation and to eliminate as much as possible of the manual labour which is employed.

Accordingly, the present invention consists in a method of spool-setting which includes the steps of noting the colour sequence in a horizontal line of a pattern, selecting from a plurality of elemental bobbins at least one bobbin containing thread of a colour corresponding to that of a square of the pattern and assembling a plurality of such selected bobbins side by side in the same colour sequence as that noted upon the pattern in order to form a spool. The selection of a bobbin may be performed manually or with the aid of mechanical, electrical or so-called electronic devices and/or circuitry. It may be desirable to select two or more bobbins at the same time.

Further, the present invention consists in a method of spool-setting which includes the steps of controlling by Patented Oct. 20, 1964- means of a record the operation of selection mechanism which is operable to select at least one elemental bobbin containing thread of a particular colour from a plurality of such bobbins, selecting a plurality of such bobbins by repeated operation of said selection mechanism under the control of said record, and assembling said plurality of selected bobbins in a colour sequence which is predetermined by said record in order to form a spool. The record may take several forms, for example, a punched or magnetic tape or a punched card, the colour of each of the threads to be employed in one row or in more than one row or in each row of a repeat of a carpet design being recorded on said record in coded form. Preferably, of course, the coded form of the recording of said thread colours in any one row will reproduce the colour sequence (reading from left to right or vice versa) to be found in that row. It may also be desirable to select two or more bobbins at the same time.

Further, the present invention consists in a method of spool setting which includes the steps of noting the colour sequence in a horizontal line of a pattern, operating a selection mechanism to effect the selection from a plurality of elemental bobbins of at least one bobbin containing thread of a colour to be employed in a carpet row corresponding to said pattern line, repeating the oper ation of said selection mechanism a predetermined number of times to select a plurality of elemental bobbins, and assembling said plurality of selected bobbins in a colour sequence identical with that in said pattern line in order to form a spool. The selection mechanism may take anyform suitable for manual operation and may, for example, include a manually operable keyboard or a plurality of depressible buttons or a plurality of switches, actuation of a key, button or switch causing, directly or indirectly, the selection of one elemental bobbin from a location in which is stored a plurality of bobbins which, in total, contains threads of at least all the colours which are to be employed in the making of a particular carpet. It may also be desirable to select two or more bobbins at the same itme.

Further, the present invention consists in a method of spool-setting which includes the selection by a selection mechanism of an elemental bobbin from a plurality of elemental bobbins, the feeding by feeding mechanism of a selected bobbin to an assembly location, and assembling a plurality of selected bobbins side by side in order to form a spool. Each elemental bobbin contains thread of one particular colour but the number of colours employed .in the making of an Axminster carpet may be hundreds.

The operation of the selection mechanism to pick out a bobbin or more than one bobbin containing yarn of the desired colour may cause the selected bobbin or bobbins to move into a stationary feeding mechanism (for example, one or a series of sloping guides) or may cause the selected bobbin to become engaged by or to drop onto a positive (driven) feeding mechanism. Further, the operation of one control (key, button or switch) may cause operation of both the selection mechanism and the feeding mechanism, or separate controls may be provided for the separate mechanisms.

In accordance with any aspect of the invention, a device or devices may be incorporated at the location of assembly to assist the assembly of the several bobbins.

In order to carry any aspect of the present invention into effect, the yarn is preferably wound in the form of .a disc upon an annular former which may be, for example, of metal, wood or natural and/ or synthetic resin material, the disc being otherwise formed solely from the yarn itself. The discs when fully wound upon precision .winding machines are preferably but by no means exclusively of 3" diameter and in axial width, the former having a 1" bore through which means may be inserted which will ensure that all the discs have a common or substantially common axis of rotation. Apart from the former, therefore, the sole constituent of the disc is the yarn itself and even the former may be omitted. The discs (with or without the formers) are referred to through this specification and in the claims appended hereto as elemental bobbins.

Again, the elemental bobbins may take the form of the so-called brass bobbins which are employed in the lace-making industry.

It will be appreciated from what has been said above and from the specific description of the invention below that the basic concept of the present invention is to dispense with the labour-consuming and time-consuming process of spool-setting as now pnactised and to replace this process with a more economical method which consists essentially in the assembly side by side of elemental bobbins in a desired colour sequence by any means whatsoever (that is, entirely automatically, semi-automatically or even manually). The form which the elemencal bobbins take is immaterial; the only limitations as to their form will be imposed by the desired dimension of the spool when set-up and convenience in handling said elemental bobbins.

The present invention will now be more particularly described with reference to the acompanying drawings, in which:

FIGURES 1 and 2 are block diagrams illustrating the principle underlying two embodiments of the present invention;

FIGURE 3 illustrates diagrammatically a first practical realisation of the embodiment of FIGURE 2, including a rotatable wheel (broken away), a chute and a spoolforming station;

FIGURES 4, and 6 illustrate diagrammatically second practical realisation of the embodiment of FIGURE 2, FIGURE 4 being a front elevation of an installation for winding, storing, selecting and transporting a plurality of elemental bobbins to a spool-forming station where spools of bobbins are set, FIGURE 5 being an end elevation of said installation and FIGURE 6 being a section along the line VI-VI on FIGURE 5; and

FIGURE 7 illustrates a perspective view of one form of elemental bobbin employed in carrying the present invention into effect.

Referring firstly to FIGURES 1 and 2 of the drawings, the underlying principle of the present invention is illustrated.

In FIGURE 1, a yarn-winding station 10, a store 11 and a spool-forming station 12 constitute the essential integers of the invention. The yarn-winding station 10 may consist of one or more precision winding machines, each machine being operable to wind yarn of a particular colour into an elemental bobbin of the form described above and illustrated in FIGURE 7. In a rudimentary embodiment of the invention, the output of the station 10 may be allowed to drop from the machine into a container which, when filled, is transported to the store 11. In said rudimentary embodiment the store 11 may consist of a plurality of compartments (arranged, for example, in vertical columns and horizontal rows around the walls of a room in the manner of bookshelves), each single compartment being allotted to and containing elemental bobbins each of which consists of yarn of single particular colour. The spool-forming station 12 may consist, in said rudimentary embodiment, of a movable wheeled trolley. Accordingly, in operation, a single pair of operatives could deal with the stocking of the store 11 and the formation of spools. One operative could, for example, put away in the proper compartments the output of, say, six precision winding machines. The other operative could push a wheeled trolley around the store 11, said wheeled trolley carrying a pattern drawn on the usual squared paper and at least one rack or holder. The second operative reading the line of squares immediately above the cursor from, for example, left to right, would note the colour sequence in said line of coloured squares and would push the trolley around picking one or more elemental bobbins of the required colours. from the relevant compartments and placing said bobbins in the rack or holder, making certain that the colour sequence from left to right in that line on the pattern is reproduced exactly by the colour sequence from left to right of the plurality of elemental bobbins lodged in the rack or holder. When the whole line of the pattern has been reproduced in this manner, a shaft or rod is inserted through the aligned central apertures in the elemental bobbins to form a spool. It will be appreciated that, once the operative in charge of spool-forming has become familiar with the positions of the compartments containing the various colours of yarn, even this manual embodiment of the invention (which is, therefore, comparatively slow) will enable a far greater output of set-up spools to be achieved that is possible with the present system. At present, it is the practice in Great Britain to employ two girls on each spool-winding machine and these two girls are able to work at the approximate rate of setting-up and winding-otf six spools per hour, assuming that only a single spool is wound-off for each of six different spool-setting operations. We estimate that, even employing the relatively slow manual procedure described above with reference to FIGURE 1, it should be possible easily to double this working rate, thereby achieving with two operatives the production of at least twelve set-up spools per hour. The effect of this will be that for a production of the same size as at present from the spool-setting section the number of operatives could be halved, or that with the same number of operatives production could be doubled.

It will be obvious that more mechanised methods of transportation of wound elemental bobbins from the station 10 to the store 11 can be provided.

Referring to FIGURE 2, a yarn-winding station 20, a store 21, bobbin selection mechanism 22 forming a part of said store and a spool-forming station 23 constitute the essential integers of a more automated installation for carrying the present invention into effect. The output of one or of a battery of precision winding machines is fed into or transported to the store 21, the bobbins of each particular colour of yarn being stored in one compartment or location. The operation of the bobbin selection mechanism by the operative ensures the selection from the store 21 of a bobbin containing yarn of a particular colour. The selection mechanism may be of any type whatsoever.

One embodiment of the invention which makes use of a keyboard operated manually by a spool-setter is illustrated in FIGURE 3, which is more or less schematic and is not intended to illustrate all the details of the mechanism since the provision of the missing details would not present any difliculty to a competent engineer.

A wheel 30 is secured at its central hub to a shaft 31 which is rotatable by a motive power unit which is not illustrated. A plurality of shafts or spindles 32 depends from one face of the wheel 30, each shaft 32 being provided with releasable catches 33 which retain elemental bobbins 34 on the shaft 32 until said catches are released. The wheel, in rotating, passes over a spool-forming station 35 which, in a simple form, may consist of a chute 36 and a rack or holder 37 connected to a keyboard 38 in the same manner as the movable carriage of a typewriter is connected to the depressible keys of the typewriter. Elemental bobbins are stored on the shafts or spindles 32 by pushing said bobbins upwardly to collapse the catches 33.

Selection of at least one elemental bobbin from a spindle 32, regardless of that spindles location with respect to the spool-forming station 35, is initiated and effected by depression of the key in the keyboard 38 which represents the colour both of one particular square of the squared pattern from which the machine operator is working and of the yarn in the elemental bobbin or bobbins selected. Depression of the key will (by means, for

example, of relays and a rotary line switch of the type in widespread use in automatic telephone installations) start the motive power unit which will rotate the wheel until the spindle 32 holding bobbins of yarn of the selected colour is disposed above the station 35, will thereupon prevent further rotation of the wheel 36 and will cause the catches 33 to be released (for example, by means of an operating solenoid located within the spindle 32) to. allow a single bobbin 34 to drop off the spindle 32 into and down the chute 36 to the rack or holder 37. When said rack or holder -37, moving, for example, one space. to the left as soon as a key is depressed, has been filled with elemental bobbins 34 in a colour sequence identical with that in a line of squares in the squared pattern, a shaft is caused to extend through the aligned central apertures of the assembled bobbins to form a spool.

Referring now to FIGURES 4, 5 and 6 there is illustrated a continuously operating installation which winds yarn into elemental bobbins, stores the elemental bobbins, seelctively releases said bobbins under the control of bobbin release mechanism operated by punched tape, transports selected bobbins in the required colour sequence to a spool-forming station and sets a plurality of spools one spool at a time.

Thus, the installation consists of an endless conveyor belt 60 intermittently driven for movement in the direction of the arrow 61 beneath a battery of stored elemental bobbins. The installation illustrated by way of example only consists of forty-eight units, each unit including a precision Winding machine 62 (FIGURE 5) capable of winding, for example, five elemental bobbins per mintute, each bobbin when completed being dotted from the machine winding head 63 on a chute 64 leading to a reciprocating loading pad 65. Said pad 65 is moved upwardly (for example, by a cam) to cause the elemental bobbin 66 thereon to move past collapsible catches 67 on a spindle 68, said catches 67 thereafter retaining the bobbin 66 on the spindle 68 until the catches 67 are collapsed again by, for example, an electrically operated solenoid located within the spindle 68. Associated with each of the forty-eight units (of which only units 1, 2, 47 and 48 are drawn in FIGURE 4) are four spindles 68, 69, 70, 71 which depend from a turret 72 having an indexing mechanism indicated generally at 73.

Adjacent that end of the conveyor belt 60 towards which the upper lap thereof is travelling there is disposed a collection device 74 which forms a part of the spoolforming station. Also forming a part of said station is a replaceable set of four shafts 75, 76, 77, 78 mounted upon a base 79 connected by connecting pins 89 to an indexing device 81.

The operation of the mechanism so far described with reference to FIGURES 4 to 6 is as follows:

Each precision winding machine 62 winds and dolfs elemental bobbins 66 and the bobbins are stored on the spindle 68. When the spindle 68 is full, the turret 72. is rotated (except as hereinafter mentioned) by the indexing mechanism 73 to move the empty spindle 71 (FIGURES 5 and 6) into the position in which it is vertically above and axially aligned with the pad .65.

It will be assumed that each of the forty-eight units is to be employed in the setting of spools to make an AX- minster carpet, each unit dealing with yarn of a dilferent colour from that of the yarn dealt with by the remaining units. The conveyor belt 60 is started and, reading from left to right along the first line of the squared pattern representing the repeat of the design, elemental bobbins 66 are released from those spindles of the spindles 68, 69, 70, 71 in each unit which overhang the conveyor belt. Bobbins 66 are selected in this manner in the same colour sequence as the adjacent squares in the squared pattern, and the conveyor belt 60 transports the bobbins 66 which fall thereon to the spool-forming station so that said bobbins arrive at the collection device 74 in the same order as that in which they were selected. The collection device 74 picks each bobbin be the conveyor belt 60 and 6. ensures that it is centred exactly in relation to that one of the shaft 75, 76, 77, '78 which is-being loaded.

When any one shaft is filled, the indexing device 81 is operated by an operator to present an empty shaft for loading. A filled shaft constitutes, of course, a set spool.

When the spindle, in any unit, from which elemental bobbins 66 have been allowed to drop on the conveyor belt 60 is empty, the indexing mechanism 73 associated with the turret 72 of that unit is operated to rotate the turret to present an empty spindle to the winding machine 6?. and to position a full spindle over the conveyor. The exception referred to in the third preceding paragraph in relation to rotation of the turret 72 when the winding machine has filled a spindle is that the turret 72 will not be so rotated until the spindle which is being emptied is completely empty. Therefore, it will be necessary to'provide the installation with means of stopping the winding machine when the spindle just filled is not immediately moved and replaced by an empty spindle.

The selective release of elemental bobbins 66 may be effected in a variety of ways. Thus, for example, an operator can sit at a control console opposite the spoolforming station with a squared pattern and operate switches in a sequence dictated by the coloured squares of the pattern. The operator can if necessary ensure by observation along that, when an elemental bobbin from unit 48 is wanted, followed by one from unit 1, the two bobbins are collected by the device 74 in the desired sequence. Provided the speed of travel of the conveyor is high enough, but not so high as to cause a jam at the collecting device 74, the time wasted in waiting for the bobbin selected from unit 48 to move past unit 1 will not be such as to negate the other advantages'which accrue from the present invention.

On the other hand, instructions may be fed to the fortyeight units by means of a record, for example, a. punched tape or card or by a magnetic tape or by a tape which will control the incidence of light on a light-sensitive device. Such punched tapes having the necessary pattern information thereon in a predetermined code or multiunit code would be used to actuate the aforesaid units to dispense or release the desired bobbin and subsequent bobbins in predetermined order. In lieu of .a punched tape, magnetic tapes and associated magnetic readers or light sensitive control units may be utilized to actuate the subsequent release of the bobbins from storage and control also if desired the conveying means to carry the bobbinsjto the spindle loading station. Magnetic tapes whose control characteristics can be changed by writing the necessary controlling information thereon and thus changing the state of the magnetic layer on the tape present a relatively simple way to transfer the control information to the aforementioned readers. However, if instructions are so fed to the forty-eight units, there must be provided in each of the units 1 to 47 means whereby the instruction is noted, stored and only efliected after a predetermined time delay. Thus, the maximum time delay will be built into the release mechanism of unit 1 since unit 1 may be instructed to release an elemental bobbin 66 which must follow the bobbinreleased by unit 48 in accordance with that instruction which preceded the instruction given to unit 1. The time delays built into the other release mechanisms of units 2 to 47 will become progressively less. It is contemplated to selected ele. mental bobbins and to feed selected bobbins to the spoolforming station at the rate of one per second and, there fore, assuming that there are seven endsto the inch of a 27" wide repeat, it will (at leastin theory) be possible to set one spool in just over 3 minutes.

The endless belt 60 will move at the same speed as the record and further the belt 60 and the record will be moved intermittently. This intermittent motion of the belt 69 is desirable but is not essential for the reason that it is considered that it will be more easy to control the disposition of a bobbin which has been allowed to drop from one of the units 1 to 48 on to the belt. It will be appreciated that a fairly light elemental bobbin dropping on to a belt 60 which is moving continually would probably be inclined to slip initially on the belt and would probably be inclined to rotate about its own axis before coming to rest on the belt.

Therefore, the object of driving the belt 60 intermittently and stopping it whenever a bobbin has to be dropped from one of the units 1 to 48 is to ensure, as far as possible, that the bobbin will land on the belt 60 with the free end of the yarn thereof located in exactly the same position (or approximately so) as the free ends of the yarn of all the other bobbins which have previously been dropped on to the belt 60. As all the bobbins are collected by the collection device 74, it will obviously be of advantage for the bobbin to become located on that one of the shafts 75, 76, 77 and 78 which is being filled to make a spool in such a manner that all the free ends are located in exactly the same angular position with respect to the axis of said shaft because all these free ends have to be inserted into a tube frame at a later stage in the process of spool-setting.

Referring to FIGURE 7, there is illustrated an elemental bobbin 100 which has been wound on a former 161 on a precision winding machine. As mentioned earlier in the specification this elemental bobbin is preferably but by no means exclusively of the order of 3 diameter and has an axial width W of approximately V of an inch. The bore of the former 80 may be, for example, of 1" diameter. It is not essential for the elemental bobbin to be wound on a former but (apart from the material employed in making the former when a former is used) the sole constituent of the elemental bobbin is the yarn itself.

Reviewing now some of the advantages of the methods of spool-setting according to the present invention as compared with the system or method now in common use, firstly, it is now common practice to wind off, for example, six spools after each check of the yarn colour sequence against the pattern colour sequence to set a new spool. This is because the setting up process is laborious and time-wasting and because it is felt that it is better to wind off a number of spools each having a particular yarn colour sequence thereon than to wind off too few spools only to find in a relatively short time (because that particular Axminster carpet sells well) that further spools are required which will necessitate again going through the whole procedure of setting-up the creel and spool-setting. However, the advantage (if any) gained by winding off six spools is counter-acted by the fact that the yarn wound on the six spools for each line of a repeat of an Axminster carpet represents an enormous number of feet of made up Axminster carpet, bearing in mind that a normal repeat consists of between 150 and 300 lines. Having wound oil, for example, six spools for each line of the repeat of a particular Axminster design there is the problem of storage of those spools which are not required for immediate use and in some cases it is three months or even longer before these spools will be used up. This storage problem, therefore, seriously limits the range of Axminster designs which a carpet manufacturer can offer. Further, the present system is uneconomic and wasteful because it ties up capital in the form of yarn and in the form of an unnecessarily great number of spools.

With the methods of spool-setting according to the present invention it is possible, with far less waste of time, to set up a single set of spools for a repeat of an Axminster design. The conventional spool at present employed has, say, from 32-35 feet of yarn wound on it whereas the elemental bobbins each contain about 56 feet of yarn, when these elemental bobbins are of 3" diameter. It will, therefore, be seen that, with the conventional method of spool-setting, about 200 feet of yarn is appropriated with a set of six spools in a form which is useless for any other purpose than formaking one particular design of Axminster carpet, whereas with the present invention only 56 feet of yarn are so appropriated. When one multiples the number of feet of yarn stored on said set of six spools by the number of lines for a normal repeat, the advantage afforded by the present invention from this aspect alone will be seen to be very great.

From another aspect, it will be possible to accumulate a library of records (for example, magnetic tapes) which can be stored together with a chart indicating which units of the units 1 to 48 (FIGURES 4, 5 and 6) are to wind and dispense elemental bobbins containing yarn of the various colours to be employed in that particular Axminster carpet design. Once the installation has been thus set up, it will be possible by passing the tape through a reading device to set the number of spools required to complete the particular order received. Even if it is found that a certain quantity of yarn on each spool is unused, the storage problem is far less than that created by having a greater number than two sets of spools to be stored.

A greater selection of Axminster designs can be offered to customers by employing the methods of spool-setting according to the present invention because, once the record library has been established, there will be less time spent in spool-setting. At the present time, only a limited range of Axminster designs is, in practice, offered for the reason that it takes so long for one pair of operatives to set the required number of spools to make the repeat of any design and for the reason (mentioned above) that the carpet manufacturer has a certain amount of floor space which can be devoted to spool storage and no more.

Again, a carpet manufacturer might form the conclusion that a new Axminster design will prove very popular and might wind a larger than usual number of sets of spools. If the design were to prove unpopular, the manufacturers error of judgment will, withconventional spoolsetting, cost him a lot of money. With any of the methods according to the present invention, the financial risk is very greatly reduced because, initially, only one set of spools will be set.

We have also found that winding yarn in the form of elemental bobbins on precision winding machines enables the yarn to be wound with a more uniform winding tension applied thereto, and this, in turn, means that waste is reduced.

Having thus described my invention, what is claimed and desired to be secured by Letters Patent is:

1. A method of loom spool-setting which includes the steps of controlling by means of a record the operation of selection mechanism which is operable to select at least one elemental bobbin from a plurality of such bobbins, each selected bobbin containing thread of only one color, selecting a plurality of such bobbins by repeated operation of said selection mechanism under the control of said record, and assembling said plurality of selected elemental bobbins in a colour sequence which is predetermined by said record in order to form a spool.

2. A method of loom spool-setting which includes the steps of utilizing the colour sequence in a horizontal line of a pattern and operating a selection mechanism to eifect the selection from a plurality of elemental bobbins of at least one bobbin, each selected bobbin containing thread of only one color, said colored thread to be employed in a carpet row corresponding to a position in said pattern line, repeating the operation of said selection mechanism a predetermined number of times to select a plurality of bobbins in a colour sequence identical with that in said pattern line and assembling said bobbins in order to form a spool.

3. A method of loom spool-setting which includes the selection by a selection mechanism of an elemental bobbin having one color yarn thereof from a plurality of elemental bobbins, the feeding by feeding mechanism of a selected bobbin to an assembly location, and assembling a plurality of selected bobbins, each selected bobbin cont-aining threads of only one color, side by side in order to form a spool.

4. A method of loom spool-setting which includes the steps of utilizing the colour sequence in a horizontal line of a pattern, preparing a record of instruction data in accordance with said colour sequence adapted to control the operation seriatim of selection mechanism, passing said record through a reading device operable to convert an item of said recorded instruction data into positive instructions to one of said selection mechanisms to select at least one elemental bobbin containing thread of a particular colour from a plurality of such bobbins, selecting in accordance with said colour sequence a plurality of such bobbins by repeated operation of said selection mechanisms under the control of said record, and assembling said plurality of selected bobbins in accordance with said colour sequence in order to form a spool.

5. A method as claimed in claim 4, including preparing the record of instruction data by perforating a medium in accordance With a predetermined multi-unit code.

6. A method as claimed in claim 4, including preparing the record of instruction data by perforating a medium in accordance With predetermined code.

7. A method as claimed in claim 4, including preparing the record of instruction data by changing the magnetic state of a magnetic layer thereon.

8. A method as claimed in claim 4, including preparing the record of instruction data by making a medium which Will control the incidence of light on a light-sensitiv device.

9. A method of loom spool setting Which comprises Winding a plurality of elemental bobbins each With a single color thread, storing the bobbins according to color, automatically selecting by selecting means a single bobbin of a desired color from the storage supply in accordance With a pattern, delivering sequentially-selected bobbins of desired colors in sequence to an assembly station and assembling the bobbins in axial relationship in accordance With the pattern to form a set spool.

10. The method according to claim 9 including automatically delivering the individual Wound elemental bobbins to the storage means as they are formed and assembling the Wound bobbins according to individual color.

11. The method according to claim 9 including con trolling the selection of the individual bobbins from the storage means according to the color sequence of the pattern.

12. A method of spool setting which comprises winding a plurality of elemental bobbins from a supply of a single color yarn, delivering each bobbin as it is Wound to a supply station, assembling each color bobbin at the storage station according to its particular color, controlling by means of a record the selection by selecting means from storage of each elemental bobbin containing only a single color yarn in accordance With the record color sequence, delivering each bobbin in the proper sequence to an assembling station and assembling the bobbins one on an other to produce the desired color yarn sequence in the set spool, maintaining the elemental bobbins in assembled relationship and removing the set spool to a storage station.

13. The method according to claim 12 including delivering the set spool from the storage station to the loom and feeding the yarn ends from the set spool to the loom to produce an Axminster rug.

14. A method of loom spool setting which comprises selecting sequentially by selecting means each of a plurality of single color yarn carrying elemental bobbins from a supply station containing a plurality of such bobbins in color segregated relationship, controlling the selection of each bobbin by a pattern record containing the desired color sequence to be set, delivering the bobbin to an assembly station, repeating the selection and delivery of each color bobbin in accordance with the pattern, assembling the bobbins in axial relationship and maintaining the assembled bobbins in assembled color sequence to form a set loom spool.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,478,082 12/23 Whitlock 28-725 2,952,891 9/60 Robinson 28-725 3,059,310 10/62 Greenleaf et al. 2855.5

DONALD W. PARKER, Primary Examiner.

RUSSELL C. MADER, Examiner.

Claims (1)

1. 3. A METHOD OF LOOM SPOOL-SETTING WHICH INCLUDES THE SELECTION BY A SELECTION MECHANISM OF AN ELEMENTAL BOBBIN HAVING ONE COLOR YARN THEREOF FROM A PLURALITY OF ELEMENTAL BOBBINS, THE FEEDING BY FEEDING MECHANISM OF A SELECTED BOBBIN TO AN ASSEMBLY LOCATION, AND ASSEMBLING

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