Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Unusual Tools: Jaw Couplings

I picked this up last week just as a curiosity:




The Lovejoy company's motto is "where the world turns for couplings."  It was founded in Chicago by Thomas Lovejoy in 1900 as a manufacturer of tooling and machinery for the railroad and steel indusries.  Twelve years later it was purchased by W.H. Dangel who retained the name (let's face it: "Dangel:  where the world turns for couplings" could be misconstrued) and in 1927 the company purchased the patent for a jaw coupling from Louis Ricefield.  The softer medium between the steel pieces, which absorbs shock, is referred to as a "spider."  This patent was their gold-egg laying goose.  Today, the couplings are available from the company in more than 850,000 combinations of bore sizes!


2 comments:

Lovejoy-inc said...

Thanks for posting the Lovejoy coupling patent drawing ... we haven't seen it for awhile.

Lovejoy-inc said...

As a further note, the coupling you show in the picture is an older cast iron version of the powder metal couplings we manufacture today.