Brush filling machine and method of operating same

A brush filling machine having a frame, a rotary turret mounted in the frame, a brush body feeding system for supplying brush bodies to the turret, a take-off system for removing filled brush bodies from the turret and a pair of filling tools having their fiber tuft delivery openings facing one of a plurality of lateral gripping faces of the turret, each gripping face of the turret having gripping means for releasably holding a pair of adjacent brush bodies, said pair of filling tools having their tool slides slidably mounted in a common filling tool box in a parallel and adjacent relationship, both tool slides of the pair being connected to a common tool slide drive, each filling tool having an anchor wire feed channel extending transverse to the direction of sliding movement of the tool slides and opening next to the opposed faces of two adjacent tool slides, each filling tool having a punch member mounted for reciprocating movement in the filling tool box transverse to the sliding movement direction of the tool slides and having a cutting edge adjacent to the open end of an associated anchor wire feed channel, a continuous strand of parallel fibers being supplied to each filling tool from at least one spool transverse to the sliding movement of the tool slides, a tuft cutter being associated with each filling tool to cut off individual fiber tufts from the fiber strand, and said tuft cutters being connected to a common tuft cutter drive.

A method of operating a brush filling machine having a frame, a rotary turret mounted in the frame, a brush body feeding system for supplying brush bodies to the turret, a take-off system for removing filled brush bodies from the turret and a pair of filling tools having their fiber tuft delivery openings facing one of a plurality of lateral gripping faces of the turret, each gripping face of the turret having gripping means for releasably holding a pair of adjacent brush bodies, said pair of filling tools having their tool slides slidably mounted in a common filling tool box in a parallel and adjacent relationship, both tool slides of the pair being connected to a common tool slide drive, each filling tool having an anchor wire feed channel extending transverse to the direction of sliding movement of the tool slides and opening next to the opposed faces of two adjacent tool sides, each filling tool having a punch member mounted for reciprocating movement in the filling tool box transverse to the sliding movement direction of the tool slides and having a cutting edge adjacent to the open end of an associated anchor wire feed channel, each filling tool having a tuft picker member reciprocatingly pivoting about a common axis parallel to the axis of reciprocating movement of said punch members, the tuft picker members being parallel and spaced from each other and being connected to a common tuft picker drive, and each tuft picker member cooperating with at least one associated fiber supply box, the at least one fiber supply box of one of the filling tools being mounted on top of the at least one fiber supply box of the other of the filling tools;

• wherein two brush bodies are supplied at one time to one lateral gripping face of said turret while two other brush bodies are being filled with fiber tufts on an adjacent lateral gripping face on said turret and two further, filled brush bodies are removed from a further lateral gripping face of said turret, said turret being indexed after each completed brush body filling cycle to present a new pair of brush bodies to be filled with fiber tufts to said filling tools, each of said filling tools performing one of successive filling strokes for each fiber tuft to be anchored in the respective brush body, and wherein the indexing of said turret is performed within the time of one of said filling strokes so that indexing of said turret causes no wait state of said filling tools.

A method of operating a brush filling machine of the type having a frame, a rotary turret mounted in the frame, a brush body feeding system for supplying brush bodies to the turret, a take-off system for removing filled brush bodies from the turret and a pair of filling tools having their fiber tuft delivery openings facing one of a plurality of lateral gripping faces of the turret, each gripping face of the turret having gripping means for releasably holding a pair of adjacent brush bodies, said pair of filling tools having their tool slides slidably mounted in a common filling tool box in a parallel and adjacent relationship, both tool slides of the pair being connected to a common tool slide drive, each filling tool having an anchor wire feed channel extending transverse to the direction of sliding movement of the tool slides and opening next to the opposed faces of two adjacent tool slides, each filling tool having a punch member mounted for reciprocating movement in the filling tool box transverse to the sliding movement direction of the tool slides and having a cutting edge adjacent to the open end of an associated anchor wire feed channel, a continuous strand of parallel fibers being supplied to each filling tool from at least one spool transverse to the sliding movement of the tool slides, a tuft cutter being associated with each filling tool to cut off individual fiber tufts from the fiber strand, and said tuft cutters being connected to a common tuft cutter drive;

• wherein two brush bodies are supplied at one time to one lateral gripping face of said turret while two other brush bodies are being filled with fiber tufts on an adjacent lateral gripping face on said turret and two further, filled brush bodies are removed from a further lateral gripping face of said turret, said turret being indexed after reach completed brush body filling cycle to present a new pair of brush bodies to be filled with fiber tufts to said filling tools, each of said filling tools performing one of successive filling strokes for each fiber tuft to be anchored in the respective brush body, and wherein the indexing of said turret is performed within the time of one of said filling strokes so that indexing of said turret causes no wait state of said filling tools