154 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



[February i, 1908. 



THREE HEAD RUBBER COVERING MACHINE. 



THE machine illustrated here is of very rigid construction, and 

 is designed for handling wires and cables up to i'A inches 

 diameter. It consists of a rigid bed, provided with heads driven 

 by bevel gearing from the main shaft which runs along the 

 side of the bed. Each head is provided with compensating gear- 



stains by simple attrition. Of late years, however, a certain 

 amount of wet cleansing has been done, and instead of inventing 

 their own machine for it the rubber trade turned to the great 

 cleansers of the world, the American Laundry Machinery Manu- 

 facturing Company, and took a machine — the Watkins washer- 

 built for an entirely different purpose, and found it worked 

 perfectly. -^-U illustration of the machine is given herewith. 



BEDS FOR OCEAN CABLES. 



R 



Large Three He.ad Rubber Covering Machine, 



ing, by which arrangement the cutters can be reground when 

 dull, and used until considerably reduced in diameter. 



The heads are so arranged that one housing can be taken away in 

 order to change the cutters without removing the shaft or gearing. 

 Each head is provided at the back with 'wire and rubber strip 

 guides and an arrangement for holding the rolls of rubber. At 

 the front is a pair of wooden rolls with spring tension driven 

 by a small belt from the cutter shaft for carrying off the scrap. 



The cutters or compression rollers are 9 inches in diameter, and 

 are made of hardened steel, shaped and ground to the proper size. 

 The rolls of rubber used on the machine are 14 inches in diameter 

 and of the proper widths to suit the wire or cable. 



A countershaft is furnished with the machine which has 24- 

 inch tight and loose pulleys for a 6-inch belt, and should make 



150 revolutions per minute. This gives a cutter speed of 24 

 revolutions per minute, and feeds the wire or cable through at 



the rate of 56 feet per minute. 



A cross shaft at the front of the machine is 



geared from the main shaft, and has a 14 x 2>/2- 



inch flanged pulley for driving a wind-up fixture. 

 The floor space of machine is 14 x 3 feet, and 



the net weight of machine and countershaft, 



4,200 pounds. 



A taping head, shown on the cut, placed at the 



extreme front of the bed can be furnished when 



desired. This taping head has a 4-inch hole 



through the spindle, and carries a roll of tape 



loyi inches diameter of any width up to 6 inches. 



The floor space, with taping attachment, is 16 x 3 



feet. The machine is manufactured by the New 



England Butt Co. (Providence, Rhode Island). 



ADIOLARIAN ooze and other 

 soft muds in the deeper parts of 

 the ocean floor make a good bed for 

 ocean cables to rest in, and we learn 

 from Dr. Klotz, who has been telling 

 the story of the British Pacific cable, 

 that cable steamers will swerve many 

 miles from a straight line to avoid 

 craters and hard, undesirable ground 

 and find a mud floor, where the line 

 is least exposed to injury. 



At the present prices of gutta- 

 percha, the essential envelope of cop- 

 per cables, it is highly desirable to 

 find widespread beds of radiolarian 

 or globigerina oozes, which help to 

 give long life to these channels of 

 communication. Deep sea cables last 

 much longer in the tropics than in the northern oceans, and the 

 reason is that in the tropics the marine life, whose remains are 

 the largest constituent in the formation of the soft muds of the 

 sea floor, is more abundant than in the waters further north or 

 south. — New York Sun. 



The Bayne-Subers Tire and Rubber Co. (Cleveland, Ohio), 

 the incorporation of which was noted in The India Rubber 

 World, November i, 1907 (page 59), have not yet made any an- 

 nouncement regarding their purposes, but it is known that the 

 organizers of the company have been experimenting for the past 

 two years on a certain manufacturing process for the betterment 

 of the automobile tire and high pressure tubing of all descrip- 

 tions, the principle of which is outlined in United States patent 

 No. 837,041, issued to E. D. C. Bayne and L. A. Subers. 



WASHING RUBBER GOODS. 



IT is not only raw rubber that needs washing. 

 Many of the smaller articles in soft rubber, 

 after vulcanizing and trimming, must be washed 

 and scoured to remove stains. The ancient way 

 was to do most of this by putting them in 

 tumbling barrels, sometimes with a charge of 

 sand and pumice stone added, and removing the 



The W.\tkins "A" Washer. 



