US1416085A - Method of forming stacks of wedge lifts - Google Patents

Description

E. E. WINKLEY. METHOD OF FORMING STACKS 0F WEDGE LIFTS. APPLICATION FILED JUNE 23, 1920.

1,416,085. Patented May 16, 1.922.

Wires stares r arsnrorrics.

ERASTUS E. WINKLEY, 0F LYNN, MASSACHUSETTS, 'ASSIGNOR TO UNITED SHOE MACHINERY CORPORATION, OF IPATER-SON, NEW JERSEY, A CORPORATION OF V NEW JERSEY.

M THOD or FORMING sTAcKsor WEDGE LIFTS.

7 Specification of Letters Patent. 'Pajbgntad pl 16 Original application filed January 22, 1917, Serial No. 143,738. Patent No. 1,352,492, dated September 14, 1920. Divided and. this application filed June 23, 1920. Serial No. 391,237.

To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, ERASTUS E. WINKLEY, a citizen of the United States, residing at Lynn, in the county of Essex and State of Massachusetts, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Methods of Forming Stacks of Wedge Lifts; and I do hereby declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertain's to make and use the same.

This invention relates to methods of formingstacks of wedge lifts of sheet material, and it has special reference to such lifts as are cut from a piece of stock, or are otherwise formed, or'operated upon, and then delivered in face-to-face stacked relation, ready for transferral to other machines.

The invention, although not so restricted, is particularly applicable to wedge-lifts such as are used in the manufacture of shoe-heels, and which may be out from transversely tapering strips and then arranged and delivered in stacks, for the sake of compactness in storage, or convenience in handling,

or in the subsequent feeding of the lifts by the feed mechanisms of. other' 'machines, such as automaticheel building machines.

Articles which are wedge shaped or tapering in form will not stack properly toany material height when lying loosely one upon another and all in similar positions with respect to their tapers, or their thick and thin 5 ends. However, if they are arranged in alternate or reverse 'relat1on-'that is, with their thick and thin ends alternating, they may be stacked to any desired height and may be successfully fed one at a time from one end of the stack.

Such an arrangement or stack of wedge lifts is particularly important when usedin connection with a magazine and feed mechanism of an automatic heel building machine, 45 i such for instance, ascdisclosed in Letters Patent of the United States Nos. 1,352,745 and 1,352,746 granted September 14, 1920, to Fred V. Hart. In both of these structures, the lifts are stacked in alternate relation with respect to their tapers, although the lifts in the stack of the latter patent are so disposed that their analogous faces are all directed the same way, while those of the former patentQhave the analogous faces of ad acent lifts in reverse relation or in contacting engagement.

One of the objects of the present inven- 5 tion is to devise a simple and expeditious method of forming stacks of wedge lifts from transversely tapering strips of sheet material from which lifts are successively cut and then progressively arranged in a chine having a magazine and feed mechanlsm of the type shown and described in said patent No. 1,352,746 hereinbefore re-. ferred to. e

These and other objects and features of the invention will become apparent from the following description of the invention in connection with the apparatus illustrated in the accompanying drawing, of which the single figure is a partially diagrammatic perspective" view of apparatus through; the

agency of which the present invention may be practiced with facility and rapidity. I

I Those skilled in the artwill, of course, understand that the method of the present invention is entirely independent of the apparatus illustrated,.which is shown merely as an .exemplificationfof one manner in which the invention may be carried out conveniently. The. particular apparatus, chosen for illustrative purposes, is similar tot-hat shown and describedin detail in'applicants Letters Patent of the United States No, 1,352,492- granted September 14,1920 of 'which the present application is adivision.

Inasmuch as the apparatus illustrated forms 'no part of the present invention and, moreover, is set forth completely in the present application to which reference has been made, only a brief generaldescription thereof w1ll be given herein. v

Wedge llfts utilized in building shoe-heels strips of sheet material which areconvenare usually cut from transversely tapering and are conveniently made of sheet metal thickness in a plane extending diagonally through the lateral edges thereof. A strip thus formed generally has one face at right angles to the surface of its thick lateral edge and another longer face inclined thereto.

In carrying out the method of the present invention, as illustrated in the accompanying drawing, such a transversely tapering strip S is fed step-by-step by means of a. reciprocating feed dog 10 from a magazine 12, containing a stack of similar strips, beneath a suitable reciprocating cutter 14. The cutter 14:, in this instance, is in the form of a knife which serves to out polygonal wedge lifts W of the desired width successively from each strip as it is fed. It will be noted that a lift formed in this manner will have one face at right angles to the surface of its thick edge and another face inclined thereto, so that the latter face will be the longer ofthe two.

In building heels, it is desirable that wedge lifts be positioned with their longer faces directed toward the heel seat thereof and, therefore, it is necessary that the wedge lifts .be stacked in the magazine of the heel building machine in such manner that they may be successively fed and presented for assembly with other heel lifts in this position. The method of the present invention accomplishes this result in the following manner.

Immediately after a lift N is cut from the strip S which rests upon its shorter face, it is fed laterally in the direction'of its thin end into one of a plurality ofstirrup-like carriers 16 by means of a suitable reciprocating pusher 18 that engages the thick end of the lift.

The carriers 16 are of like construction bent into the proper shape. The horizontal bottom plate 20 of each carrier lies in the plane of the cut lift so that the lift may be easily pushed into the carrier where it rests upon the bottom plate thereof. The carriers 16 are suspended from the respective ends of a horizontal supporting arm 22, one carrier being pivotally mounted thereon while the other is fixed thereto. Intermediate its ends the supporting arm 22 is carried by and secured to a vertical shaft 24; that is rotatably mounted in a sleeve a part of a supporting meshes with a rack 34 which is adapted for reciprocatory movements to turn the shaft and therefore the carriers, first in one direction and then in the other, through successive half-rotations in opposite directions.

The pivotally mounted carrier 16 into which a lift is about to be loaded, as illustrated in the drawing, is provided with a inion 36 which meshes through an idler gear 38 with a pinion 40 which is fixedly secured to the sleeve 26. Therefore, as the rack 34 rotates the shaft 24, supporting arm 22 and associated carriers 16 through a half-rotation to transfer the lift in its own plane to a position adjacent the receiver 30, the pinions 36 and 40, together with the idler gear 38 serve to impart a corresponding half-rotation to the pivotally mounted carrier 16 and to the lift being transferred thereby. Thus, the transferred lift in the pivotally mounted carrier 16 occupies a position similar to that which it occupied before the transferral was effected.

' 0n the other hand, any lift which is loaded into the carrier 16 which is fixed to the supporting arm 22 is rotated through a half-turn in its own plane during the transfer movement, so that such lift is reversed in position withrespect to its taper or its thick and thin ends.

As the lifts are successively transferred by the carriers 16, every alternate lift being reversed end-for-end, the lifts are removed from the carriers and swung upwardly into the receiver 30 by means of an oscillatory lifter arm &2 which is fixed to a periodically operated rockshaft 4ft and which swings upwardly through recesses 46 inthe bottom plates 20 of the carriers in such manner as to raise the lifts into vertical position in the receiver 30 where they are progressively stacked and retained by means of resilient detents 4:8and 50.

It will be apparent that through the oper ation of the mechanism described, the wedge lifts W which are successively cut from the tapering strips S are progressively transferred and delivered to the receiver 30 in stacked relation in such manner that the lifts are reversed in position with respect to their tapers or thick 'and thin ends, while their analogous faces are all directed in the same way t-hat is, all of the longer faces will point in one direction and all of the shorter faces in the other. The lifts so stacked may then be removed from the receiver, still in stacked relation, and conveniently introduced into a magazine of a feed mechanism of a heel building machine or any other machine adapted to operate upon the successive lifts.

In certain aspects of the present invention, the steps of feeding the tapering strips and cutting lifts therefrom successively may be omitted, and a series of lifts that may have been previously cut, or otherwise formed, or operated upon, may be fed all in similar positions into the carriers and subsequently transferred and delivered in stacked relation in the manner set forth. Furthermore, although for illustrative purposes, the present method has been described in connection with wedge shaped polygonal heel lifts, it should be understood that the invention is not in any way restricted to the handling of such blanks, but is generally applicable to any character of wedge shaped articles or blanks of sheet material.

The nature of the invention having been set forth, that which is claimed as new is:

l. The method of forming a stack of wedge articles which includes feeding a succession of wedge articles in similar positions, successively transferring said wedge articles to another position and turning the alternate articles end-for-end in substantially their own planes during the transferral, and stacking the transferred articles with their thick and thin ends alternating.

2. The method of forming a stack of wedge articles which includes feeding a succession of wedge articles in similar positions, and stacking said articles in face-toface relation with their thick and thin ends alternating and their analogous faces directed the same way. g

3. The method of forming a stack of wedge articles which includes feeding a succession of wedge articles in similar positions, reversing the position of every alternate article with respect to its taper, and stacking said articles with their thick and thin ends alternating and their analogous faces directed the same way.

4. The method of forming a stack ofwedge articles from a transversely tapering strip of sheet material which includes cutting wedge articles successively from the strip, and progressively stacking said articles as they are cut in face-to-face relation withtheir thick and thin ends alternating. 5. The method of forming a stack of wedge articles from a transversely tapering strip of sheet material which includes intermittently and longitudinally advancing the strip, successively cutting wedge articles therefrom, and progressively manipulating said articles to bring them into stacked relation with their thick and thin ends alternating. 6.-The method of forming astack of wedge articles from a transversely tapering strip of sheet material which includes cuttin stri p, and progressively stacking said articles as they are cut in face-to-face relation with their thick and thin ends alternating and their analogous faces directed the same way.

wedge articles successively from the 7 The method of forming a stack of wedge articles which includes feeding a succession of said articles in similar positions, turning the alternate articles end for end while still maintaining the analogous faces of all the articles pointing in the. same direction, and stacking the articles with the analogous faces all pointing toward one end of the stack.

8. The method of forming a stack of wedge articles the two faces of which differ from each other in certain characteristics, which lncludes feeding a succession of said.

articles with their thick ends all directed one way, reversing the direction of said thick ends on alternate articles of said succession of articles, and then stacking said ERASTUS E. WINKLEY.

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