55,| Root v. Hobbs Mfg. Co., 55

• Decision Date: 05 November 1923
• Docket Number: 55
• Citation: 294 F. 236
• Parties: ROOT et al. v. HOBBS MFG. CO.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

294 F. 236

ROOT et al. v. HOBBS MFG. CO.

No. 55,

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

November 5, 1923

Frederick P. Fish, of Boston, Mass., George H. Kennedy, Jr., of Worcester, Mass., and J. L. Stackpole, of Boston, Mass., for appellant.

Charles F. Dane, of New York City (William F. Hall, of Washington D.C., of counsel), for appellees.

Before ROGERS, MANTON, and MAYER, Circuit Judges.

MANTON Circuit Judge.

The first patent in suit, No. 1,131,161 is for a safety device for punching machines. The second, No. 1,196,721 is for a safety device. On this appeal, the principal question contested is that of infringement. The device is a mechanism designed to prevent the crushing of the fingers of the operator while she is engaged in feeding paper stock for paper box manufacturing on an automatic machine known as an automatic paper box corner staying machine. The corner staying machine is now well established in the trade or art of making paper boxes.

The art of making paper boxes requires that squares be set or reinforced at the corners, where a union of the sides and ends are made and the application of adhesive strips of paper or muslin placed upon the joints. The corners are thereby strengthened before receiving their final covering of paper. The work of thus strengthening the corners of paper boxes by these adhesive strips had been performed in a tedious irregular manner, by hand, prior to the invention of the automatic machine in question. This machine consists of an anvil or lower die, having at the upper portion two working faces which diverge downward from one another at a right angle. There is a vertical movable die or plunger, which works in connection with the anvil or die, having two diverging working faces. The working faces of the plunger form a notch therein, which notch co-operates with the upper portion of the lower anvil or die; the dies being adapted to operate upon the right angle corner of the box to compress the said corner between the working faces of the opposing dies. A strip of paper suitable for a stay is fed by the automatically moving mechanism over the pasting device and between a pair of shears, and thence between the upper and lower die when separated. When a box corner is to be strengthened by the addition of a stay strip, it is placed upon the lower anvil or die; the inside of the corner of the box resting upon the apex of the lower die. As the machine revolves, it then feeds forward the stay strip, which has the paste upon it, and as the lower die descends, the shears also operate severing from the continuous stay strip, a portion sufficient for the stay. As the cutting operation is completing, the upper die or plunger is descending, and forces the gummed stay strip into position upon the outside of the box corner, and the stay strip and box corner are pressed between the working faces of the two opposing dies and thus the stay strip is caused to conform to and be stuck upon the corner of the box. When the upper die or plunger rises, the box with its attached stay strip can be removed, and another corner placed in a position for another operation. See description in Hobbs v. Beach, 180 U.S. 383, 21 Sup.Ct. 409, 45 L.Ed. 586.

The machine not equipped with the device made under the patent in suit proved to be dangerous to the operator, the danger consisting in the possibility of her fingers being caught between the die and the anvil during the course of the rapid movements in the operation of the machine. Young girls were employed as operators, and when skilled in the trade could make 48,000 box corners per day. They were usually paid by the piece. Thus there was created a hazardous employment, which frequently resulted in the amputation of the fingers of the operator. This caused the trade to seek some safety device, and the appellee declares it obtained one in the patent in suit. It consists of dividing the link which connects the actuating shaft and the reciprocating tool carrier into two mutually collapsible parts, held together by a yieldable connection until the tool is just about to come in contact with the work, when, through automatic means, the two parts of the link are rigidly connected, in order to force the tool to perform the necessary work. Because of the normal yieldable connection between the two parts of the connecting link, when the fingers of the operator are caught between the descending tool and the work, the part of the link connected to the actuating shaft is permitted to continue and complete its stroke, while the part of the link connected to the tool carrier, by reason of the release of the yielding connection between the two parts of the link, is no longer forced toward the work. The resulting relative motion between these two parts permits the making of the rigid connection between the part connected to the operating shaft and the part connecting to the reciprocating tool carrier, so that the operator's fingers, while pinched, are not crushed in the machine. Thus there is substituted, for the solid link, a two-part collapsible link connecting the operating shaft and the reciprocating tool carrier of the machine. This is the subject of the first patent.

The second patent consists of mechanism by which the object connecting with the operating shaft is in its working stroke first locked to the part connected to the moving tool carrier, then released from it, and finally relocked to it, just as the tool is about to contact with the work in the normal operation of the machine. If the operator's fingers are between the tool and the work, the second locking of the parts is prevented, and the operator's fingers are not crushed. In the machine, the bottom die or anvil is fixed to the bed plate of the machine, or it may be stationary in space. It has a punch or upper die, which is movable in space toward and from the other bottom die or anvil. At one end of the upper shaft there is a disc, from the face of which, eccentrically thereof, a pintle projects. The disc and pintle form in effect an ordinary crank. The upper die is mounted in a carrier intended to be constantly reciprocated in a vertical direction by power shaft through the interposition of a link. This arrangement is such that the die is moving at its maximum velocity when it is half way down, and this movement is gradually retarded to zero at the end of the stroke.

This mechanism is no part of the invention in suit. In lieu of the solid link, the invention provides a two-part link as described, one of which telescopes in the other. One of these parts or link sections may be considered a part of the carrier for the upper punch. The other link section is provided at its upper end with an opening to receive the power shaft pintle and its body, with a bore opening out through its lower end. The other section of the link which as stated, may be part of the die carrier, consists of a head and a shank telescoping in the bore of the first section. Bolts are associated with the second section, for preventing it, at...