US1927918A - Method of cutting jacquard cards - Google Patents

Description

f k Sept. 26, 1933. D. CARMICHAEL 1,927,913

METHOD OF CUTTING JACQUARD CARDS Filed Aug. 15, 1931 2 Sheets-Sheet 1 WITNESS: INVENTOR 1 Iluncan Earn 11211521 BY I v. I 4 l r 1 I H13 ATTORNEY 2 Shbets'-Sheet 2 Filed Aug. 15, 1931 F 1U... (I o a e 0 o o o o o o 0 o 0 o o o o o oo o o 000 o oo. 0 00000 00 o o o o o 0000 00 o 000 00 000 o 000 o o 00 000000 o 000 O o 0 00 O 0 o o 00 000 o o 0800 000 0000 o 8 o 0 0 00 o 0 0 00 00 0 00 000 0000 O0 00 O 00 00 O 00 00 O 0 000 000000000000 0000 0 000 00 0 000 000 0000000 o 000 0000 wmow oo ow o oo o moooow 0 00m 00 o .o 000 w 00 o o o o 00 000000 0 o oo o o 000 00000 00 00 0 00 0 00 000 8088 o o 000 ww 00 00000 0 mm m o 000000 00 0000000 0 00 0 0 o o 8 m oooow omo 0 m ww oo mo 0 00 00 000 00 o oo o oo oo 00 000 00 00 000 00 o o 000 00 000 o o w 0800 o 000 000 000000 ow 0 000000 0 oo o 000 00 oo oww o o w 0 000 00 oo owo o o ,o o o o O O O0 0000 mwoo O OO O O O O w 1 m .m 0 Th T N E T E A W m m 3 w w. m n U D.

WITNESS: 2% 7 8/17! Patented Sept. 26, 1933 -METHOD F CUTTING JACQUARD CARDS Duncan Carmichael, Philadelphia, Pa.

Application August 15, 1931. 'Serial No. 557,411

' 4 Claims.

This invention relates to jacquard machines, and particularly to the method of cutting cards for operating the same.

While in the United States jacquard cards are 5 almost universally cut by piano card stamping machines, there were built about 1891, three automatic card cutting machines, operated by a selector or reading device associated therewith, and this reading device was intended to be controlled by a zinc plate or pattern. The zinc plate or pattern could, for a few years, be purchased in London, England, as they had been made up to accommodate the machines mentioned, but now they must be made to order.

These zinc plates are perforated throughout their area and are 28 in width. They are provided with 12 perforations to the inch in the width, and 14 perforations to the inch in depth. However, even though there are 336 perforations in width across the plate, only 324 or 27 effective inches of the plate are used as the controlling means for the reading machine, as the needles of the reading machines are banked in sections of 324 needles. I

The outside holes, that is, 6 on each side of the effective 324, are used for advancing the zinc plate in the reading machine, and are exactly the same as the perforations on the edge of a motion picture film.

, These zinc plates may be as long as desired in order to accommodate the motif or design, but several sections are, of course, necessary where curtains or other fabrics exceed 27" in width. In the use-of these zinc plates as controlling means for the reading device of the automatic card cutting machine, the design or pattern is first laid out on cross section or check paper. This cross section or check paper is not standard such as that ordinarily employed, viz: 10x10 to the inch, but may be of varying combinations, such for instance as, in width, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 and 16, and in depth from 6 up to 36, so that it is not unusual to have a pattern laid out on check paper of, let us say, 10 checks wide to 18 checks in depth to the square inch. 1 7

Now, the design on the check paper is the actual size and arrangement of the design in the finished article, but the zinc plates are perforated with 12 perforations to the inch in width, and 14 perforations to the inch in depth, so that on the zinc plate, the design from the 10x18 check paper will cover less than an inch in width and much more than an inch in length. 1 This, however, has no effect upon the actual material woven by the jacquard machine, and is sponds in width to the design itself, that asthey merely the method which is used for controlling the automatic card punchin press to produce the cards for operating the jacquard.

In making up the zinc plate for the design, from any check paper, it was formerly the custom to complete the design, perforation for check, upon the zinc plate byleaving certain of the perforations open where the open check appeared on the pattern, and closing the perforations for the-solid work by painting with a composition such as a whiting and dextrin. 1 I

Usually this compound is placed in a tube and the nozzle of the tube passed over-the holes to be filled, the compound being pressed out so that it emerges in the same manner as tooth-paste, from the ordinary tube. I

As before mentioned, in these zinc plates, while containing 336 perforations, only 321 of the same are effective 12 to' the inch, and as the article to be woven is often and usually much-wider, the pattern was carried over onto another or successive plate until the combined zinc plates corresponded exactly with the design of the full width as laid out on the check paper. I

It follows, therefor e, that if thepatterns contained 6, 8, l0, 12, 18 or any number of repeats, these were all required to be painted upon zinc plates in order to get the full width of the fabric required. Now, since many, and in fact, nearly all of these patterns for lace curtains, tapestries, and the like, are of the repeated ornament class, the objector repeat appears several times in the Ofcourse, the length of the objector repeat is I immaterial, because only one full repeat :was included on the zinc plates, but the entire width, down to this point, had to be painted on the sections or plates. I

Let us take, for example, a curtain 60" in width. In that event, if it were a 12 point'curtain, there would be 720 perforations of zinc plate necessary to accommodate the pattern. I 7

When the word poin is used, it will be understood that this is the number of needlesor hooks to the inch in width, that is'to say, the check paper having 6 checks to the inch in width'would be for a 6 point fabric, 12 for a 12 point, 16 for a 16 point, etc. It follows, therefore, that since the zinc plates with the 12 point curtain corre- 1 contain only 2'7 effective inches in width, twoand a fraction plates would be required to complete the'width foroperating the reading device for the card cutting machine.

Now, it is possible that this particular fabric had 12 repeats and possibly even more. I Consequently, it was necessary. to repeat and repeat the same design time after time on the zinc plate.

Now, if the piano card stamping machine is used, it is always necessary to paint the complete pattern on the check paper because the card cutter or operator follows along one complete line or width of checks for punching the cards, and since there are 16 punch holes to the vertical line on the cards, the card cutter always lays out the check paper into widths of 16 points, drawing lines down through the design.

This is necessary becauseit may be that" the number of checks in width is not exactly divisible by 16 and, therefore, the number of holes will not come out even on the card. -This is all a, 17, 0V

work to the average card cutter, and additional explanation is deemed unnecessary.

The object of the present invention is to. pro

7 Another object of the invention is to provide 'a process of cutting jacquard cards in which,

by far the greatest portion of the labor entailed is entirely eliminated.

The invention, succinctly stated, consists in taking a design of repeats, preparing a check paper covering one repeat, in width and length, 1

and fromjthat check paper preparing a zinc plate covering the same portion of design, then using that zinc'plate as a pattern for preparing The drawings illustrate an embodiment of theinvention and the views therein are as follows: Figure 1 is a plan view of a portion of the width of a net design,

Figure 2 is a diagrammatic view showing the piecing together of the paper sheets for operating the selecting or reading machine to operate the automatic card cutting machine, and I Figure 3' is a view of several cards laced togethr, the pattern of these cards, however, not

corresponding to the pattern shown in Figure 1. Figure 1 may be said to indicate a portion of a netdesign, or it may indicate the zinc plateformerly used for cutting card with the auto matic card cutting machine.

In the present method of operating the auto matic card cutting machine, the zinc'plate, or combined zinc plates, are as wide as the design or textile desired.

The dots in Figure 1 are intended to indicate perforations, and the sheet 6 initially is provided, throughout its entire area, with perforations such as shownatfl. lhe portions 8 indicate the areas in which the holes or perforations 7 have been closed by painting the same with a perforation filling compound, such as whiting and dextrin.

The selector or reading mechanism which is i really a partof the automatic card cutting machine, controls that machine through the medium of the zinc plate by reason of the fact that the punch pins on the machine are controlled by the dropping or the means for preventing the drop ping of needles acting with the zinc plate. This will probably be clear when we consider that the -In my improved process I prepare'a zinc plate having a single or a little more than a single repeat of the required length. The left hand side of thepattern in Figure 1, and up to the line Y A-A will serve to indicate the width of the Zinc plate.

Of course, for the purpose of making up this foreshcrtened lzinc plate, it is only necessary to make up the check paper design of the same width, hence all the balance of the width of the fabric to be woven is eliminated from the check paper and probably the actual painting of the design has been cut to onequarter, one-eighth, or even greater percentage of time with this method. I

After this zinc plate of shortened width has had the repeat painted thereon, it is passed through a duplicating machine, which forms no part of this invention, but which is intended to simultaneously cut or punch several sheets of strong paper with the same design as-thatfdesign indi- Figure 1 bounded on the cated by the portion of right by the line A--A.-

Referring now to Figure 2, it will be seen how these sheets are then utilized'for preparing the pattern for controlling the selecting or reading machine.-'- The portion or strip 9 bcundedon'the right by the dotted line 11, indicatesithe the zinc plate initially prepared. 7

Inthe pattern shown in Figure 2, the repeat or motif is repeated five .times 'in' thew-idth' of the pattern. The paper sheets, which ina'yalso be indicated by the characteristics 9,12, 13, lie

and 15, are then laid together, in matched -relation at the dot-and dash'lines 16, Wlt il'thl1" edges slightly overlappingandthis junction point indicates the continued design of"the entire pattern. 1 e 1 Figure 3 indicates the type of cards'which are cut by the automatic card cuttingmachine, and

as before stated, these particular cards are not the cards of they design shown in Figure 1, but are selected at random merely to indicate the type of card which is produced by this paper pattern cut from the single :repeat zinc plate.

Figure 2 illustrates the greatsaving of preparation of the zinc plate by my methodover the former method, since in this particular instance a check paper-design and also a plate only one fifth, or slightly more than one-fifth, of the entire pattern need be prepared and painted for producing a paper plate which, for all purposes,

. is just as useful in the preparation of the cards 17.

The zinc plates upon which the patterns are initially paintedare washedv and again used after the cards 17 are cut and,,therefore, a much smaller' amount of perforated zinc need be carried in stock than by the present method.

Another very valuable use of my invention comes in the preparation of curtains of different widths, say for instance, 54 inches, 45-inches and 36 inches. Under the present. method, ,it' would be necessary to provide three separate zinc plates of those widths for cutting the cards 17.

By my improved method the pattern may be narrowed or widened by merely omitting or adding a section of the cut paper.

With my improved method it is also only necessary to provide one ornament or object on the draft paper or check sheet, because a zinc plate only wide enough to cover that single ornament is to be painted. Therefore, my method will eliminate the services of draftsmen in preparing repeated ornament on draft paper or check sheets, and at the same time, eliminate the services of girls or others who are employed to paint the design from this draft paper or check sheet onto the zinc plates.

The duplicating machine mentioned in this explanation is not essential to the invention, and merely consists of punch pins controlled by keys, the punch pins passing through the open holes of the perforated zinc plate so that the paper sheets are exact duplicates of the zinc plate.

If, in the particular instance just mentioned,

that is, where a curtain without a border has eight repeats, if it took the draftsman 16 hours to paint the entire width of the design, which we will say is '72", by merely copying 1 repeat of that pattern his work would occupy approximately 2 hours, and if it took the girl who painted the zinc plate 8 hours, her work will now be cut down by this method to approximately 1 hour. That is a combined time of 3 hours as against 24 hours, and since the operation of the duplicating machine is automatic, no time really need be reckoned for that machine.

We, therefore, find that we have the design ready for cutting the cards in one-eighth of the time formerly employed. But there is a much larger saving than this to be considered, because if another curtain of the same design and 54" wide were required under the old process, it would be necessary to use 12 hours of the draftsmans time, and 6 hours of the time of the girl painting the zinc plate, which is 18 hours, whereas with my invention it is only necessary to omit two of the sections of paper which have been punched for operating the reading mechanism to control the punch press for producing the curtains to punch the 54 pattern.

Therefore, when the single repeat has been drawn upon the check paper, prepared or painted upon the zinc plate, and the paper sheets punched therefrom, the cards for any width of curtain using this design can be made immediately by merely changing the number of sections of paper on the reading mechanism.

Ofcourse the representations and illustrations herein are explanatory only, and the invention is susceptible of various changes and modifications in the exact system and method disclosed,

without departing from the invention herein set forth and hereafter claimed.

The invention is hereby claimed as follows:

1. The herein described process of making jacquard cards from'repeat designs comprising the steps of first providing .a perforated plate with one repeat of the design, then using that plate as a pattern, punching the required number of sheets of paper from the same pattern, and

then arranging the paper sections so that the repeats are side by side to form the complete pattern for cutting the cards for the entire design.

2. The process of making jacquard cards comprising the steps of preparing a perforated plate by closing some of the perforations to correspond to one repeat of the required design, then duplicating said plate in perforated paper sheets, and then operating a selector device with a plurality of said sheets corresponding to the full design.

3. The process of making jacquard cards on an automatic card cutting machine controlled by a selecting machine, comprising the steps of preparing a perforated plate with a single repeat of the design, then using theperforated plate as a pattern for'perforating a plurality of paper sheets suflicient to carry out the entire de-v sign, and then using said paper sheets to control said selecting machine.

4. The processv of making selector 7 control means for an automatic card cutting machine,

comprising the steps of first preparing a perforated zinc plate with a single repeat of the desired pattern by filling certain perforations,

and then simultaneously duplicating the remain-- ing perforations of said plate in a plurality of paper sheets. 7

DUNCAN CARMICHAEL.

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