fficient to reduce it to the size that can be taken in
by the presses, but not sufficient to cause any extraction of the oil.
The seed leaves the moulding machine in the form of a thick cake from
nine to eleven pounds in weight, and each press is constructed to take
in twelve of these cakes at once. The press cylinders are 12 in.
diameter and are of crucible cast steel. To insure strength of
construction and even distribution of strain throughout the press, all
the columns, cylinders, rams, and heads are planed and turned
accurately to gauges, and the pockets that take the columns, in the
place of being cast, as is sometimes usual, with fitting strips top
and bottom, are solid throughout, and are planed or slotted out of the
solid to gauges. The pressure is given by a set of hydraulic pumps
made of crucible cast steel and bored out of the solid. One of the
pump rams is 21/2 in. diameter, and has a stroke of 7 in. This ram gives
only a limited pressure, and the arrangements are such as to obtain
this pressure upon each press in about fourteen seconds. This pump
then automatically ceases running, and the work is taken up by a
second plunger, having a ram 1 in. diameter and stroke of 7 in., the
second pump continuing its work until a gross pressure of two tons per
square inch is attained, which is the maximum, and is arrived at in
less than two minutes. For shutting off the communication between the
presses, the stop valves are so arranged that either press may be let
down, or set to work without in the smallest degree affecting the
other. The oil from the presses is caught in an oil tank behind, from
which an oil pump, worked by an eccentric, forces it in any desired
direction. The cakes, on being withdrawn from the press, are stripped
of the bagging and cut to size in a specially arranged paring machine,
which is placed off the bed-plate behind the kettle, and is driven by
the pulley shown on the main shaft. The paring machine is also fitted
with an arrangement for reducing the parings to meal, which is
returned to the kettle, and again made up into cakes. The presses
shown have corrugated press plates of Messrs. Rose, Downs & Thompson's
latest type, but the cakes produced by this process can have any
desired name or brand in block letters put upon them. The edges on the
upper plate, it may be added, are found of great use in crushing some
classes of green or moist seed. The plant, of which we give
illustrations opposite,