PAPERS IN MANUFACTURES. FIFTEEN GUINEAS were this Session voted to Mr. T. SADDINGTON, of Shadwell, for a Machine for covering Wire. The following Communication was received from him on the subject, and a Model of the Machine is preserved in the Society's Repository. SIR, WITH this communication you will receive a working model of an apparatus on an entirely new invented principle, which I have constructed and brought forward with a view to facilitate the manufacture of covered wire, and I shall esteem it a favour if you will lay the following particulars, together with the model, before the Society of Arts, &c. for their approbation. About eight years ago, I had the honour of receiving a Premium of Thirty Guineas from the Society for the invention of a machine for covering wire in a small space of room, the particulars of which are contained in the Twenty-seventĺ Volume of the Society's Transactions. The present invention is an improvement on the mode of covering wire in long shops or sheds, as practised by all manufacturers who have the conveniency of such premises. The long shop covering or spinning, as it is generally termed, is by doing one length of wire at a time, yet it is the most expe litious manner of covering of any in practice, and notwithstanding the velocity with which the wire is turned round, the process of covering is very tedious, the revolutions of silk or cotton round the wire being from forty to one hundred and twenty in every inch, according to the fineness and purposes for which it is wanted. But, perhaps, the average may be fairly taken on the sizes of what is mostly used, at sixty revolutions for every inch of wire, so that each separate length of wire would have to perform 43,200 revolutions in a shed of only twenty yards long, and supposing the wire to be impelled round with a velocity to make fifty revolutions in every second of time, it would require more than fourteen minutes to cover a space of twenty yards in length. By the present invention, six wires are all covered at one time, by which improvement, a saving is gained of five-sixths of the time occupied in the act of covering, or what may be expressed more plainly, fifty minutes are gained out of every hour so employed. The upright posts, A, plate 5, of the machine, with the multiplying wheel, are fixed to the floor at one end of the shop, and B, at the extremity of the other end. To A, is attached an arm and fan, F, containing six grooved hooks placed in the form of a segment of a circle, which are carried round by the multiplying wheel, D; the band is adjusted |