Apparatus for making deep flute shade

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT Referring to the drawings and particularly FIG.
1, a pleating machine 10 is illustrated according to the present invention generally including a base 11 having a support 12 for a roll 13 of web-fed material 14 which passes over a heating roller 16 to a pair of overlapping endless forming conveyors 18 and 19 from which serially deep fluted pleated material 20 exits.
The heating roller 16 and the endless conveyors 18 and 19 are driven by motor 24 through chains 25, 26 and 27.
To form the deep fluted pleats as shown at 20, endless forming conveyor 18 carries a plurality of forming rollers 30 having annular forming ends 31 that cooperate with a plurality of point ended forming plates 33 on conveyor 19, which as shown are staggered with the forming rollers 30 as they mesh at 35 in co-linear travel with web 14 therebetween.
As seen more clearly in FIG.
2, forming conveyor 18 includes a pair of spaced parallel endless chains 40, and conveyor 19 includes a similar pair of spaced parallel endless chains 41 (shown diagramatically in FIG.
2), each including a plurality of links.
Each link in the chains 40 has one side plate 42 with an integral coplanar upwardly extending flange 43 with an aperture 44 extending therethrough as seen in FIG.
3.
Aperture 44 is sized to receive reduced shaft portion 46 on forming roller 30.
As seen in FIG.
4, the forming plates 33 have a working knife edge 48 and a transversely extending base flange 49 which is mounted directly on link flanges 50.
Each of the links in conveyor chains 41 has one side plate 52 that has an integral outwardly extending transverse flange 50 to which the forming plate faces 49 are fixed by a fastener 54.
This arrangement eliminates the need for any complex mounting brackets between the forming tools and the traveling chains.