Looms and Presses.
To-day a designer always seeks to make a machine self-acting, to limit the operator’s task to starting, directing, and stopping, all with the utmost facility and the least possible exertion. So far has success gone in this direction that a single tender in a cotton-mill may have charge of sixteen Northrop looms, and go to dinner leaving all at work. In case that a thread breaks in any of them, the loom will stop of itself and no harm will be done, the only loss consisting in the time during which the wheels and levers have lain idle. A stop-motion at its simplest is a fork through which the thread travels; as the thread moves forward, the fork is bent downward extending a light coiled spring; should the thread break, the spring instantly lifts the fork, which in rising stops the machine.
Among the most noteworthy automatic machines are the presses which take a continuous roll of paper, print both sides, cut it into leaves, fold these, paste them at the back, and, if desired, sew them together and attach a cover. Such a press stands for the union of several operations once distinct; it argues great ingenuity, careful planning, with paper exactly adapted to the stresses it must encounter, while the ink is of a quick-drying variety.
Dexter feeding mechanism.
Dexter Folder Co., New York.