Roller apparatus for cutting glass fibers

In a cutting roller for directly chopping wet continuous elongated filaments which are drawn from a bushing into finite fibers of predetermined length including a driven cutting roller drum mounting a plurality of spaced, parallel, radially outwardly extending cutting blades and adapted to be biased into driving and filament cutting engagement with the resilient outer peripheral surface of a filament feed roller, the improvements characterized by:

• (a) said cutting rollerdrum comprising a main body having axial slots in the surface thereof for receiving cutting blades and retainer strips, and cylindrical flange plates removably attached to the opposite ends of said main body, each said flange plate having a diameter greater than that of said main body and a flat cylindrical surface, the inner surface of said flange plate inclined inwardly at the part extending radially past the circumference of said main body,
• (b) a plurality of retainer strips associated with said cutting blades, respectively, said retainer strips and cutting blades being held in said axial slots by said inwardly inclined surfaces of said flange plates, and
• (c) the width of the feed roller being at least equal to that of the cutting roller including the flat cylindrical surfaces of said flange plates, whereby the flat cylindrical surfaces of said flange plates frictionally contact and drivingly engage the opposite ends of the outer peripheral surface of the feed roller, and the cutting blades penetrate into the resilient outer peripheral surface of the feed roller to a depth just sufficient to implement filament chopping.