Waist Expander Views

General Goods

This invention relates to a waist expander for a trouser finisher. The apparatus disclosed has particular application in facilities which manufacture trousers of various types, such as bluejeans. The disclosure in this application will be directed specifically to a machine intended to apply a finishing press to bluejeans at the end of the manufacturing process. This application relates to patent application Ser. Nos. 532,768; 532,791; 532,788; 532,789 and 532,792.

Experimentation with various waist expander designs has demonstrated that a simpler, more professional looking trouser finish is obtained by dressing and pressing the trousers with as little physical manipulation as possible and by placing the trousers in as simple a pressing configuration as possible. It has been determined that this is most easily accomplished by manipulating the trousers into a position wherein each side of the trousers from the waistband to the cuffs lies in a single plane.

Another problem not adequately addressed in the prior art is the frequent necessity in manufacturing plants to press numerous different sizes of trousers which may range from those intended for small children to sizes for heavy adults. In known prior art pressers, a single waist expander may accommodate a size range from 8 to 10 inches, for example, from 23 to 30 inches (58 to 76 cm.). To avoid having to change the waist bucks and side chests on the pressing machine, all of the trousers would be required to have waist sizes within this range. Otherwise, a larger or smaller waist expander and corresponding side chests would be installed on the machine, requiring expense and substantial loss of productive machine operation time. Since trousers are typically manufactured in at least four different size ranges, substantial cost is incurred in maintaining different size waist expanders for each machine and changing the waist expander from one size to another. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

Therefore, it is an object of the invention to provide a waist expander for a trouser finisher wherein the opposing side surfaces of the front and rear waist bucks of a waist expander are parallel to each other and in the same vertical plane to collectively define opposing planar pressing surfaces for opposite sides of a pair of trousers, with side chests defining planar pressing surfaces for making surface-to-surface pressing contact against the opposing side surfaces of the front and rear bucks.