In Fig. 28 part of the large bank, with a few rows of spools, is shown in the extreme background. The two sets of threads, from the two wings of the bank, are seen distinctly, and the machine or frame immediately in front of the bank is where the two kinds of lease are made when desired, i.e. at the beginning and at the end of the warp. Between this leasing frame and the linking machine proper, shown in the foreground, is the drawing, measuring and marking machine. Only part of this machine is seen--the driving pulleys and part of the frame adjoining them. All these frames and machines are necessary, but the movements embodied in them, or the functions which they perform, are really subsidiary to those of the linker shown in the foreground of Fig. 28.
FIG. 28 POWER CHAIN OF WARP LINKING MACHINE
Although the linking machine is composed of only a few parts, it is a highly-ingenious combination of mechanical parts; these parts convert the straight running group of 300 threads into a linked chain, and the latter is shown distinctly descending from the chute on to the floor in the figure. Precisely the same kind of link is made by the hand wrappers when the warps indicated in Fig. 27 are being withdrawn from the mills. Two completed chains are shown tied up in Fig. 28, and a stock of rolls or spools appear against the wall near the bank.
The completed chain from the warping mill or the linking machine is now taken to the beaming frame, and after the threads, or rather the small groups of threads, in the pin lease have been disposed in a kind of coarse comb or reed, termed an veneer or radial, and arranged to occupy the desired width in the veneer, they are attached in some suitable way to the weaver's beam. The chain is held taut, and weights applied to the presser on the beam while the latter is rotated. In this way a solid compact beam of yarn is obtained. The end of the warp--that one that goes on to the beam last--contains the weaver's lease, and when the completed beam is removed from the beaming or winding-on frame, this single-thread lease enables the next operative to select the threads individually and to draw the threads, usually single, but sometimes in pairs, in which case the lease would be in pairs, through the eyes of the camas or HEALDS, or to select them for the purpose of tying them to the ends of the warp in the loom, that is to the "thrum" of a cloth which has been completed.
Instead of first making a warp or chain on the warping mill, or on the linking machine, and then beaming such warp on to the weaver's beam or loom beam as already described, two otherwise distinct processes of warping and beaming may be conducted simultaneously. Thus, the total number of threads required for the manufacture of any particular kind of cloth--unless the number of threads happens to be very high--may be wound on to the loom beam direct from the spools. Say, for example, a warp was required to be 600 yards long, and that there should be 500 threads in all. Five hundred spools of warp yarn would be placed in the two wings of a V-shaped bank, and the threads from these spools taken in regular order, and threaded through the splits or openings of a reed which is placed in a suitable position in regard to the winding-on mechanism. Some of the machines which perform the winding-on of the yarn are comparatively simple, while others are more or less complicated. In some the loom beam rotates at a fixed number of revolutions per minute, while in others the beam rotates at a gradually decreasing number of revolutions per minute. One of the latter types made by MESSRS Urquhart, Lindsay & Co., Ltd., Dundee, is illustrated in Fig. 29, and the mechanism displayed is identical with that employed for No. 4 method of preparing warps.
The V-shaped bank with its complement of spools (500 in our example) would occupy a position immediately to the left of Fig. 29. The threads would pass through a reed and then in a straight wide sheet between the pair of rollers, these parts being contained in the supplementary frame on the left. A similar frame appears on the extreme right of the figure, and this would be used in conjunction with another V-shaped bank, not shown, but which would occupy a position further to the right, i.e. if one bank was not large enough to hold the required number of spools. The part on the extreme right can be ignored at present.
The threads are arranged in exactly the same way as indicated in Fig. 28 from the bank to the reed in front of the rollers in Fig. 29, and on emerging from the pair of rollers are taken across the stretch between the supplementary frame and the main central frame, and attached to the weavers beam just below the pressing rollers. It may be advisable to have another reed just before the beam, so that the width occupied by the threads in the beam may be exactly the same as the width between the two flanges of the loom beam.