Dixon's Foundry in Operation; making insulators experimentally using Croskey insulator machines

DIXON'S FOUNDRY IN OPERATION

Crosky's [sic] Croskey's New Machine Now Turning

Out Insulators at the Rate of One

Every Five Seconds.

During the present week we visited the plant of the H. L. Dixon Co., at Carnegie, Pa., where for some years past the company has been operating a machine shop for the purpose of preparing iron work for use in glass factory construction, and where a department has been established for the convenience of inventors desiring to do experimental work. We found that the new foundry which this company began work on several months ago has been completed and the first castings were made on Friday of last week, since which daily casts have been made most successfully. The new foundry occupies a building 64x70 feet, and hereafter the firm will be in position to make all of its own castings as well as to provide iron work ready to be put together wherever occasion may demand. This places the company in position to furnish all of its own materials and will remove a source of much annoyance which existed when outside firms had to be depended upon for supplies. The Dixon machine shop occupies a building 60x200 feet and is thoroughly equipped for turning out all kinds of iron work used in glass factory construction.

In the experimental department of the plant the most interesting sight to be witnessed, and one which promises to have a telling effect on the insulator business, is a machine that was invented by J. H. Crosky [sic] Croskey for the manufacture of insulators, which during the past two years has been in the course of perfection. The machine, a 24-mould contrivance, is automatic in all its functions excepting that the glass is gathered by hand labor, two gatherers being employed to feed it. The gatherers take the glass from the furnace and drop it into a cup over which is extended a pair of shears which open and close automatically, the shears at each closing cutting off exactly the same amount of glass. There are three cups on the wheel into which the gathered glass is dropped and immediately after the shears have performed their operation the wheel moves around one-third of a revolution, the cup reverses itself and empties the glass into a mold on the machine which adjusts itself to receive it. The mold then moves up one-twenty-fourth of a circle and a plunger is injected into it from the top forming the neck of the insulator, immediately after which the plunger contact at the bottom of the mold forms the screw. The mold is then carried past six pipes, through which blasts of cold air are blown into it, and at the seventh move the mold opens and the insulator is removed by a boy.

We watched this machine operating for one hour last Tuesday morning during which time it produced 758 insulators, or more than one every five seconds. The speed, Mr. Crosky [sic] Croskey informed us, could easily be increased to from 15 to 18 per hour, through advantageous factory arrangements, and it is expected to break even such a record once a mechanical gathering device, now in course of perfection, is ready to introduce. The machine is not a complicated affair and every part does its work without a jar or jerk. It was being operated with the use of two gatherers, one boy to take the insulators out of the mold and one to convey them to the lear, and it is claimed that through the use of this contrivance insulators can be produced at one-half the cost when ordinary methods are employed. The invention is not alone applicable to insulators, but, through a changing of molds, could be utilized for the manufacture of any kind of packers' goods, such as beer mugs, jellies, etc.