Mechanical tufting head

Details Mechanical tufting head Mechanical tufting head

1996-08-13

1998-11-03

Nerbun, Peter

Sewing

Special machines

Embroidering

112 8045, D05C 1520

Patent

active

058293728

DESCRIPTION:

BRIEF SUMMARY
BACKGROUND ART

Co-pending International Application No. PCT/AU92/00401 (WO 93/03215) describes a method and system of tufting. It also describes a mechanical tufting head with reference to FIGS. 17 and 18.
In that mechanical tufting head, yarn is fed down a yarn tube to a reciprocating needle. A reciprocating forked rod, or blade, drives tufts of wool down through the hollow needle. The blade is mounted on a carriage which reciprocates up and down along a first rail in a rotatable part of the head. A hollow tube extends upward from the carriage, concentric with the axis of the yarn tube, and outside it. At its upper end the tube is connected to a slide which is driven up and down along a second rail in a non-rotatable part of the head. The upper end of the tube is rotatably mounted in the slide to permit rotation of the rotatable parts.
The needle is also attached to a carriage which is slidable along the first rail in the rotatable part of the housing. The needle carriage also has a (second) hollow tube extending upwardly from it, again concentric with the yarn tube, and outside both the tube associated with the blade carriage and the yarn tube. The upper end of the second hollow tube is also rotatably connected to a further slide which is driven up and down and guided in its reciprocating motion by the second rail.
The advantage of this arrangement is that a motor supplying the reciprocating motion can be connected directly to the non-rotatable parts of the tufting head, which avoids any possibility of the electrical connections to the motor being tangled by rotation of the head.
However, in practice this mechanical tufting head has been found to be difficult to balance due to the complexity of its mechanism. A result is that the head vibrates increasingly as the speed of operation is increased, and this limits the maximum speed of operation. The mechanism is also massive, which in turn requires heavyweight mounting apparatus for both the head and the backing which is to be tufted. An additional problem caused by the massiveness is the size of the motor required to move the head. Further the massive head is slow to rotate, and typically 30% to 40% of the operational time will be spent turning the head rather than tufting.


SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a mechanical tufting head, comprising: hollow shaft being mounted for rotation about the axis of the yarn path and able to reciprocate along it; and carriage is able to rotate with respect to the axis of the yarn path and reciprocate along the hollow shaft.
This configuration uses the hollow needle shaft to support the blade carriage and, as a result allows a more compact tufting head to be made in comparison with the earlier known mechanism. The head need be only half the length of the earlier head and may be much less massive, which allows faster operation and causes less vibration.
A further benefit of the arrangement is that it permits continuous rotation of the needle and blade while the driving motors and linkage mechanisms may be held stationary. As a result the needle may always be rotated between two directions along the shortest path.
The rotatable parts of the head can be turned by the use of gear means, such as a toothed pulley, situated in the lower part of the head adjacent the needle. The pulley may be keyed to the needle mount in order to allow for very fast rotation. The pulley may also be keyed to the blade carriage.
In one embodiment a needle drive collar is rotatably connected to the upper end of the hollow shaft. Also, the blade carriage is rotatably connected to a blade slide which is able to translate up and down along the hollow shaft. The blade slide and the needle drive collar are both keyed into a track which allows them to reciprocate but prevents them from rotating.
An advantage of this construction is that the needle drive collar can be mounted to the housing at a single point and no other mounting will be required for either the needle mount or the blade carriage and their associated mechanisms. D

REFERENCES:
patent: 1487318 (1924-03-01), De Forest
patent: 1557970 (1925-10-01), Borrows et al.
patent: 1862768 (1932-06-01), Rice
patent: 2528392 (1950-10-01), Self
patent: 2954749 (1960-10-01), Koppelman
patent: 3142276 (1964-07-01), Schauer
patent: 4669406 (1987-06-01), Muroya
patent: 4860674 (1989-08-01), Slattery
patent: 5503092 (1996-04-01), Aubourg et al.

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