ELiECTROFORMED CONDUCTOR FOR TELEPHONE DROP WIRE 1105 



is exhausted, an impractical demand considering the small number of 

 operators assigned to the plant. Furthermore, rotating supply reels of 

 the size under consideration require special feed-off drives and controls 

 to maintain a pay-out drag of an order to establish the range of operat- 

 ing tensions demanded in the plating lines. To circumvent the objection- 

 able features of the rotating supply reels, provision has been made to 

 take the wire off ''over end" from a stationary reel, lying flat on one of 

 its heads, so that the inner (or tail) end of the wire paying off can be 

 spliced to the outer (or starting) end of a stand-by at any time before 

 the pay-off length runs out. To this end arrangements were made with 

 the steel core wire suppliers to bring the inner end of the wire to the 

 outside within the reel heads, allowing enough free length for making 

 the splice. 



Each of the twenty -five wire channels on each of the electroforming 

 machines is provided with a dual supply stand holding two reels in the 

 immediate vicinity of each other, one the pay-off and the other a stand-by 

 (Fig. 1). When placed in position on the supply stand, the upper heads 

 of both reels are set up with flyers to guide and tension the off-coming 

 wire, and facilitate automatic transfer from one reel to the next. The 



Fig. 1 — Steel wire supply stands, two for each of the twenty-five channels on 

 a machine, permit continuous operation. A 450-lb. spool of wire is being positioned 

 by the nearest operator while behind him another operator is electric welding a 

 wire joint. 



