“Mr. McCoy is entitled to the credit of first applying pneumatic tools to heavy work, such as chipping metals, caulking boilers, cutting stone and so on. He was not, however, the originator of the broad idea, as long before he perfected the tool for heavy work it had been used as a dental plugger, a device working compressed air in a cylinder so that a piston struck the end of a tamping tool, used to insert gold into the cavities of teeth.”
Rock drill used as blacksmith’s hammer.
Ingersoll-Rand Co., New York.
A rock drill, on occasion, may serve as a blacksmith’s hammer. The drill, detached from its tripod, is fastened to a vertical support. The ram, duly supplied with compressed air, is fixed in position over the anvil, upon which it descends more frequently if less forcibly than a steam hammer. A rock drill may also serve to drive drift bolts into the timbers of caissons. This task when effected by ordinary sledge hammers is slow and costly, while with compressed air as a servant capital work is done at much lower expense. The drill is provided with handles so as to be readily managed by two men, who place the anvil, with its cupped end, on the head of the bolt to be driven. Pneumatic energy does the rest.
Little Giant wood-boring machine.
Chicago Pneumatic Tool Co.
With dimensions much enlarged an air-driven piston becomes a rammer for foundry sand, for roads and pavements, for tamping the beds of railroads. In foundries a moulder is furnished with a small sand-sifter, vibrated by compressed air; he is now free to use his shovel all the time, so that he does five times as much work as before. Hoists small and large are actuated by the same agency; in every case the mechanism is so simple that rough usage is withstood and repairs, when needed, are easily effected. If a ratchet, a pawl, a bearing, wears out, a new one can be bought at small cost and at once fitted into place. Designers have produced rotary as well as reciprocating air tools; of these a wood-borer is a capital example.
Water lifted by compressed air.
Sometimes it is well worth while to employ compressed air simply as a blast to keep a milling-cutter free from its chips; when the blast is cold, as it usually is, the cutter may turn all the quicker.