To prevent damage to buttons and like attachments on garments during operations such as dry-cleaning, there is disclosed a protective capsule having two hinged sections which may be fastened together to define a closed cavity around a button. There is also disclosed a releasable catch having a resilient snap action and being so configured as to reduce the possibility of accidental unfastening.

Automatic servicing apparatus for spinning stations of one or more spinning frames includes provision for severing and clamping roving to stop feeding of the roving and to present a cleanly severed supply end of the roving in convenient position for subsequent thread-up. A carriage patrols the spinning stations and stops at any station requiring servicing, whereupon mechanism on the carriage doffs the bobbin being wound at the station, donns an empty bobbin core and normally starts the yarn spun...

A rotary chuck of a winder receives a core on which a body of yarn is wound to form a package. Upon commencing winding of the yarn it is grasped by a clamp recessed into a free end head of the rotating chuck. Immediately after the yarn has been received by the clamp it retracts a cutter guard and the strand is severed outwardly of the clamp. The yarn is wound into a spiral groove in the head to provide a tailing end of yarn of predetermined length. At a predetermined and adjustable position of t...

The present invention is a line handling device designed to facilitate positioning and handling of a mooring or docking line during a boat docking operation. The device employs a pair of arc-shaped spreader arms connected to an extendable pole. Each arm has a sleeve shaped to fit the pole. A fastening bolt passes through each sleeve, extending through the pole to secure the spreader arms to the distal end of the pole. A plurality of support tabs extend from an outer wall of each spreader arm and...

A method and apparatus for handling masa, the dough material used for production of tortillas. The hopper has a nozzle sized to output a continuous piece of masa of a predetermined thickness to a pair of spaced opposed conveyors which grip and feed the masa between them. A drive mechanism connected with the conveyors drives them at a speed faster than the speed of the masa exiting the nozzle to separate them into individual masa logs.

A fluid delivery device which delivers microliter and sub-microliter volumes by means of a reciprocating force mechanism requires no capillary contact between the delivery system and work surface. Furthermore, a built-in vacuum-based rinse station permits the user to dispense a variety of fluids while avoiding complex and time consuming changes to the fluid delivery system.

An apparatus for measuring a component that can carry out processes such as visual inspection, characteristic measurement, screening, and taping efficiently while transporting the electronic component at high speed. In order to transport the electronic components to the index table where the processes such as characteristic measurement, screening, and taping is carried out, a component transporting device is used in which the electronic component delivered from the component delivery section 10 ...

A data medium handling apparatus and a data medium handling method suitable for use for handling of documents, for example, in a financial organ. The data medium handling apparatus (30) for recognizing, based on an image (19) read from a data medium on which information is described in an arbitrary format, the information, is constructed such that it comprises means (2) for extracting characteristics unique to the data medium including the format from the read image data (19) and specifying, fro...

A fault handling system which detects a fault occurred in an information processing system, and performs fault handling processing corresponding to the detected fault in order to recover from the detected fault condition. The fault handling system is provided with a fault management table for storing operation mode information indicating the operating status of the information processing system and a type of fault handling processing corresponding to the detected fault in the information process...

A masa handling apparatus for the continuous processing of masa type dough in conjunction with commonly available feed processing equipment, such as a masa extruder, an oven, or cooling apparatus. The masa handling apparatus includes a masa separator having a pair of opposed, endless belt conveyors having facing surfaces spaced apart to receive a generally continuous masa steam output from a nozzle on the masa extruder. When the masa stream moves between the conveyors, it is gripped by their fac...