All the foregoing machines are equipped with ingenious devices for measuring the strand or rope as it is made, so that the attendant can tell instantly from the gauge how many feet have been run. The features we have here touched on are only a few of the many that have transformed the final stages of rope-making from a laborious task—dependent for its success on the skill of the individual expert—into quick, sure operations where every problem is met with the unfailing accuracy of a perfect machine. Rope nowadays is, generally speaking, made more scientifically, more uniformly than it was in the days of strictly hand processes. And the end is not yet. Better and still better rope should mark the years to come.
FOUR-STRAND COMPOUND LAYING-MACHINE
CHAPTER VII
Forming and Laying of Ropes—Factory Method, Single-Machine System
Modern rope-making ingenuity reaches its high-water mark in the compound laying-machine where the two operations of forming the strands and laying them into a rope are combined. Up to a certain point this method is more economical than that in which the forming and laying are unconnected as already described. Fewer machines are required for a given output,—hence less floor space and fewer workmen. The time-saving element also enters in.
The compound laying-machine must, however, be stopped each time that the supply of yarn on any bobbin is so low as to call for a fresh one. This would occur so frequently in the case of the larger ropes as to offset the advantages just mentioned, and the machine is therefore used on a limited range of sizes only.
As can be seen in the picture opposite, the machine contains a vertical shaft with upper and lower projecting arms which support the bobbin-flyers—four in number in this particular case. The bobbins within each flyer turn on separate spindles, allowing the yarns to pass up through small guide plates and thence into a tube.
Each flyer is geared to revolve on its own axis, thus twisting its set of yarns into a compact strand. At the same time all the flyers revolve with the main shaft in an opposite direction and form a rope out of the strands as the latter come together in a central tube still higher up.