Spool-Labels. (Inland Printer.)

Craftsmen will be interested in the following description of how labels are printed, cut, and mounted on Spools of thread, which is extracted from a recently published account of thread manufacture in detail. Formerly the process of labelling was described as follows. It is quoted here to illustrate the marvellous change effected by the most recent improvements in machinery:—

Lastly, the labellers get the finished spools; and, as every girl has the privilege of earning so much per thousand for all the labels she can put on, the dexterity they acquire in handling them is almost magical. One hand carries the gummed label to the tongue, and the other takes it off and applies it to the spool, both flying as fast as those of a skilful pianist in the liveliest music. Some girls carry a pile of labels in one corner of the mouth, and by sleight of tongue, work them out one by one at the other corner as fast as both hands in alternation can take them off and apply them to the spools.

At the time (not long since) when the above was written, a large number of girls were employed in cutting labels, and affixing them by tongue and hand, to both ends of every spool. Rows of machinery have now taken the place of those animated throngs. With here and there a quiet attendant only, the printing and labelling machines silently take in blank paper and blank spools of cotton, and automatically unite and convert them into the elegantly-labelled goods that adorn the retailers' show-cases and befit the dainty work-boxes of our ladies. Nothing can exceed the mechanical ingenuity, beauty, and finish of these machines and their delicate operations.

The label-printing machines are run right on with a rapid rotary motion as smooth and still as oil, each running out an endless ribbon of the circular spool labels at the rate of nearly half a million per day, in single black-colored lettering, gold, or blue and gold, at once—it is all the same to these swift and magical workers. Large rolls of paper, white or steel blue, are first sliced up by one simple machine into tape rolls of the various widths required by the diameters of spools. The printing machine next passes the tape in between the faces of two wheels, one of which is set round with steel dies, engraved with the design and lettering of the spool label, that sparkle like jewels as they revolve, so finely finished is their workmanship. They come into contact as they revolve, with inking rollers, and then with an impression roller, the tape or strip of paper running between and receiving the impression for the gold part of the labels, after which the strip runs under a rotary camel's-hair brush that lays on the « gold dust, » closely filling the fresh ink, or rather sizing, already impressed on the gold part of the labels; next, the strip in its progress runs under a series of rotary brushes that burnish the gold lettering to an extraordinary brilliancy. Finally, the strip passes between an impression wheel and a second steel printing-wheel, engraved with the blue part of the label, and runs out as rapidly as it ran in, all printed in blue and gold, with an endless series of round spool labels, to the number of seven hundred and fifty per minute. Printers alone know how fine and rare must be the mechanism that can put two separate parts of an engraving together in different colors, by successive rotary impressions on a swift-running strip, so accurately that no eye can detect a line of separation or overlapping anywhere between them. This is done by the rotary printing-machines, both colors in succession, and the gold splendidly burnished, as the endless strip runs through at the rate of forty-five thousand double-printed labels per hour to each machine. It is a triumph of machine-building.

And yet the new spool-labelling machines appear still more wonderful in operation. The printed strip of labels bearing the trademark runs into the labelling-machine on one side, while the strip bearing the number of the thread runs in on the opposite side. The strips run in vertically downward, facing each other, and as far apart as the length of the spools to which they are to be applied. As each strip is running in, a little circular gumming pad touches and goes, accurately gumming the back of each label. At the same time, the blank spools are running in between the strips, and the two ends of each spool meet in its two labels at the same exact fraction of a second with the quick thrust each way of a pair of sharp circular punches that cut out the labels and fix them in place on the spool. The blank spools file in on the right and pour out labelled on the left of each machine as fast as two swift-handed girls can clap them into boxes—over a dozen every three seconds, or 250 per minute! The swiftness of the complicated motions baffle the eye, and the automatic perfection of the lightning-like work staggers the very testimony of the senses. Long rows of these wonderful automatic printers and labellers fill the rooms formerly occupied by human printers, cutters, and labellers.