OF
AN EYE MACHINE,
Or Machine for making the Eyes of Hooks and Eyes.
If it were enquired why this Machine is offered to the public without the Hook Machine; the answer would be, this only is finished: and it is wished to present nothing here that admits even a doubt of its utility. The drawings given in [Plate 20], [figs. 1, 2 and 3], are more intended to be useful in the construction of this Machine than complete in appearance: so that nothing has been done by way of shading, but what it was thought would the better distinguish the parts from each other, and facilitate their assemblage in one effective Machine. The Machine consists first of a slide A B, (worked by a lever-handle, a crank, or any proper first motion.) It glides between two cheeks C D, (see the end view in [fig. 1]) connected with the several parts about to be mentioned. This slide is marked A B in all the three figures. It carries (by means of the screws a b, coming through the slits c d, in the main Plate E F) a plate g, the chief use of which is to support a tumbler e, whose use is to throw the eye, when made, from the machinery: which tumbler is kept to its work by the spring i, as will be further explained presently. This slide itself has a peculiar form at the end B, ([fig. 2]) which is shewn by dotted lines at c d in [fig. 1]. It is a slit, with the corners rounded off for the purpose of working the springs now to be described. These springs m n, (see [fig. 2]) are fixed to a cock, itself screwed behind the main plate: and they come through the latter to the left-hand-ends of the small curved mortices seen (with the springs) at m n [fig. 1]. The slide A B then, with its forked end shewn by the dotted lines at c d, is destined to take the springs m n and carry them to r s, where they are now seen surrounded by the eye almost formed: for in this motion these springs take the wire (shewn by the lines dotted across the Machine and previously cut by the sheers u) and meeting with the obstacles t v, being the thicker parts of the clams t v w, they bend it into the form r s—when the screws a b lay hold of the sloping ends of the clams c t w v d, and squeeze them together; by which operation the hooks t v finish the eye, by rolling its two ends round the springs m n now in the position r s. Where note, that the slit c d of the slide A B is so formed as, when it has carried these springs m n to r s, to slide forward without doing any thing more to them, while closing the clams. It performs, however, some other less important operations, to which it is now necessary to allude: among other things this slide works the sheers u that cut the wire, and that, by means of the doubly wedged hook x, which goes back with the plate G, doing nothing: but which by the action of its springs fixed at a, falls under the sloping end of the sheers u; and, when the slide, by the screw b, carries it to the right hand, raises the end x of the sheers u, and cuts the wire near v, to prepare it for the operations already described. The part y in the two [figs. 1 and 2], is the other cheek of the sheers fixed by screws to the main plate, and covered by a small plate z, in which a nick is cut to form a passage for the wire, and present it to the sheers, that they may cut it to the proper length, after having directed it right across the springs r s, then placed by their elasticity at m n. It hardly need be added that a stop is placed at o, to determine the length of the wire so as to form the eye complete, and not to admit more wire than is sufficient; all which is regulated between the sheers and the stop, by proper adjusting screws, which it is very easy to suppose or supply.
[Fig. 3] is intended chiefly to shew the mechanism by which the eye, when finished, is thrown off the pin round which it is bent by the springs m n. It consists of a tumbler e, placed in a mortice in the end of the plate g, and kept to a given position by the pressure of the spring i. When the slide A B is carried forward, toward E, to perform the operations already noticed, this tumbler e, gives way to the angle G of the doffing lever m G, (this lever being shewn also between c m & d n in [fig. 1]) and rides towards m without producing any effect either on the plate G or the lever m G: but when it has once passed the said angle G, it cannot go again toward F without depressing smartly the end G of that lever, and thereby raising the end m, thus starting the eye from the stud m, round which it had been bent by the processes above described.
At the right of [fig. 1] near F, is an object, the use of which is too evident to need description. It is a double spring for the purpose of keeping the hooks c t w v d pressed against the pins, near t v, which determine the position of the said hooks; and the degree of bend first given to the wire by passing the points t v.
There are some less important parts and operations left undrawn, in order to prevent confusion in the figures: but they are such as would strike any person having the above under his eye. In a word I have done what I thought best to aid the construction of this Instrument:—which is represented at two thirds of its natural size—but whose dimensions, of course, would vary with that of the objects to be produced by it.