Litton Systems, Inc.

John E Fitzgerald

Roger Francis Burlingame

Thomas G Council

A fiber guide for spooling glass fiber from an automatic coil winding machine onto a spool. The guide has a body or pay guide assembly with a receiving aperture. Two similar sections are held together with a slight gap between them. Left and right parallel strands of music wire are tightly stretched through the gap across the receiving aperture of the arc and are anchored at each end. A spool with flanged edges receives the left and right parallel strands or guides and is maintained very close to the last layer or surface of fiber laid down. A guide pulley is carried by the guide for guiding glass fiber between the left and right parallel strands and onto the spool. The parallel strands are tensioned by anchoring each wire in a respective standoff. In one embodiment, each end of a music wire wraps around a standoff. The wires extend through the cross drilled holes permitting adjustment by turning the standoff. In an alternative embodiment, a tensioner is formed by a pivotal plate, relative to the guide. The pivotal plate tightens the left and right parallel strands by spring force generated by a spring connected between the pivot plate and the guide. In yet another embodiment, the left and right parallel strands are spaced apart by washers having a predetermined thickness and clamped.

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Camarillo, CA, United States of America

John E Fitzgerald