Hollingsworth (u.k.) Ltd.

Platt Saco Lowell Corporation, Inc.

501 Hollingsworth (uk) Limited

Alan Smith

George K Butler

Stephen William Yates

Bhupendra Patel

Apparatus for stacking conical objects includes right hand and left hand side walls which are joined by divergent walls to define a tapering horizontal cross-section column in which the spacing between the opposite walls is shorter than the length of any one of the conical objects. The conical objects can be placed manually in the top of the column 1 but only in a given orientation (thanks to the tapering horizontal cross-section of the column) and only when hooked on a retaining finger projecting into the column through the side wall. The conical object at the top of the stack thus settles into an inclined orientation which it retains when the retaining finger is released to drop the cone down the column, thanks to an inertia brake to retard the wider diameter end of the falling cone and preventing the cone from becoming vertical. The retaining finger at the foot of the column releases only the bottom cone and allows any cones above it to become indexed downwardly into the bottom-most position.

Apparatus for stacking conical objects

A device for dispensing conical objects to form a stream of generally horizontal side-by-side conical objects with alternate conical objects having one orientation and intervening conical objects having the reversed orientation. The stacks having a first orientation have release cams driven from a common cam shaft while the intervening stacks have release cams driven from a common cam shaft, the timing of the two cam shafts being such that the conical objects are released successively starting from stack and ending at stack.

Apparatus for dispensing a succession of conical objects

An open-end spinning machine includes a low inertia sensing wheel frictionally engaging the package so that the rate of rotation of the frictional sensing wheel is sensed by a tachometer generator to provide a 'winding rate' signal fed to a controller for controlling the speed of a stepper motor driving the fibre feed roller of the fibre opening unit during piecing, in response to the take-up of yarn at the package. Optionally, the sensing wheel is supported on a link such that the angular position of the link indicative of the diameter of the package is sensed by an angular position transducer and the signal of the transducer is also fed to the controller. Yarn delivery rolls are separated, during piecing, to allow the rate of withdrawal of the yarn from the doffing tube of the open-end spinning unit in response solely to the accelerating package. The draft is non-linear during piecing, in accordance with a predetermined programme.

Open-end spinner piecing method and apparatus and multi-position

A transport conveyor for empty conical winding tubes includes a recirculating band system to drive jammed tubes for rotation in a direction causing them to remain mutually parallel along the chute of the conveyor. Every alternate tube is reversed by means of a holding pin and a rotating shoe. A fin upstanding from the conveyor floor supports all the tubes with their axes parallel.

Transport conveyor for conical object

An open-end spinning machine incorporating a doffer robot also includes separate tracks for the doffer robot and a piecer-cleaner robot. The robots are able to patrol continuously along one side of the machine and back along the other side of the machine, with sufficient separation for the doffer robot to pass the piecer-cleaner robot, and vice versa and for the two robots to pass end casings of the machine.

Open-end spinning machine

The invention relates to apparatus for piecing-up yarn on an open-end spinning machine. A yarn reserve forming member is movable between an extended position, in which it constrains the yarn to follow a prescribed reserve yarn path, and a retracted position, in which the yarn follows another prescribed and shortened path and the end of yarn and its length, which is the difference between the lengths of said prescribed paths, is permitted to return to the spinning means to contact fibres fed thereto. To achieve efficient piecing-up, the yarn moves between such prescribed pathways from one to the other under control of the reserve forming member while the reserve yarn path is in a sense depleted and the yarn is caused by yarn insertion means to be inserted in the delivery roller nip at a predetermined position in the course of movement by the reserve forming member when the latter moves to the retracted position. Preferably, the yarn is engaged by a yarn retaining means when in the extended position from which it is released by the resultant tension in the yarn at the end of the movement of the reserve forming member to the retracted position.

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Accrington, United Kingdom

Alan Smith