A drum brake backplate assembly including a wheel cylinder (30) having a tubular body (31) having an axially extending bore (32) within which two brake shoe operating pistons (33) are in sealed sliding contact to define a working chamber (48) therebetween. The pistons are displaceable away from each other along the bore on pressurisation of the working chamber and the body located on an associated...

A composite material for example for use in making shower trays comprises water extended polyester resin, water and mineral filler. The water reduces the amount of resin and permits casting of lighter weight trays without excessive exotherm. The amount of water is 40-200 parts (by wt) per 100 parts resin, and that of filler 30-1000 parts per 100 parts water and resin.

An optical disc reader of the kind comprising a laser arranged to direct a coherent light beam towards a disc (3) to be read, and means detecting light reflected from the disc, characterised by a second light source (1) which is non-coherent and which is arranged to illuminate the disc with light of a colour different from that of the laser beam.

A non-Woven fabric suitable for use as a household cleaning and polishing cloth of good absorbency, and high durability yet low pilling and lint comprises from 5 to 95% by weight of absorbent fibres and 5 to 95% by weight of bicomponent fibres, optionally further including non-absorbent fibres, said absorbent fibres and said bicomponent fibres being entangled with one another by an entanglement pr...

Workflow techniques for co-ordinating organisational processes by providing flexible representations of work using generalised process structure grammars (GPSG). The techniques take into account that, in reality, work evolves both horizontally, in the co-operation of causally unrelated, but information-sharing tasks, and vertically, in the co-ordination of causally-dependent activities. Process mo...

A transaction processing system has a number of point-of-sale apparatus (1) and a central host (10). Each apparatus (1) stores an external file (B) for transmission to external systems, and a separate host file with appended data for transmission to the central host. A conversion table (46) is accessed during a transaction to convert the merchant's local currency values to transaction currency val...

In a digital payment system, a sequence of random numbers is stored at a payment service. A set of digitally encoded random numbers derived from the stored sequence is issued to the user in return for payment. The tokens are stored in a Carnet. The user can then spend the tokens by transferring tokens to a merchant, for example, to an on-line service provider. The merchant returns each token recei...

Apparatus for automatically applying a braking force to a vehicle which includes a controller (on the vehicle or remote therefrom) operable selectively to transmit electrical current from a battery to a drive motor of the vehicle. The apparatus includes an electrically operated brake (14, Figure 1) for applying a braking force to the drive motor and means (1) sensitive to the angle of inclination ...

Medium modulus, polyethylene films and bags with improved tear performance are made for heavy-duty packaging applications and hot-fill uses. Film compositions contain high molecular weight linear polyethylene and linear ethylene/ alpha -olefin interpolymer. The film is at least about 1.25 mils (31 microns) thick and is characterized as having a calculated film density in the range of about 0.923 t...

Medium modulus molded polyethylene materials with improved impact strength are made. The polyethylene material is molded to pipes, bars, and sheets. The molded material comprises high molecular weight linear polyethylene and a substantially linear ethylene/ alpha -olefin interpolymer. The material is more than about 0.23 mm thick, has a density in the range of about 0.923 to about 0.95 grams/cubic...

The prodn. micro-cellular thermoplastic foam sheet comprises: (a) impregnating a plastic melt (I) with a volatile blowing agent (II) in the supercritical state in a first extrusion zone A at a temp. above the T, of (I); (b) cooling the melt by at least 40 degrees C in a second extrusion zone B, to a temp. at least 30 degrees C above the Tg of blowing agent-free (I), and (c) expanding to normal pre...

A method and apparatus for recording data on a magnetooptical recording medium finds an optimum laser beam intensities for recording. The method and apparatus do not cause a low level PL setting to become excessively low nor do they cause poor overwriting of data during overwrite recording. Recording can be accomplished by changing level and high level laser beam intensities, while holding the rat...

The present invention discloses a compound body consisting of a substrate with a surface coating suitable for wear parts and tools applications, comprising a body of wear-resistant material. The body includes top and bottom surfaces and at least one peripheral wall extending therebetween, the intersection of said peripheral wall and at least said top surface forming cutting edge means. The surface...

A process is disclosed for monitoring and/or controlling the course of an object through a predetermined series of transport and/or processing operations at various stations. An electronic camera (8) at an entry station takes a digital picture of each object (4a) before it enters the course of operations. The digital picture has characteristic traits for identifying the object (4a). These characte...

Stable water-in-resin emulsions wherein the continuous phase comprises vinyl monomer and unsaturated polyetherester resin and water-extended thermosets derived therefrom. The emulsions, which include both base-stabilized emulsions and emulsions containing fillers or functional additives, exhibit high stability compared with conventional emulsions based on unsaturated polyester resins and the water...

Solventless silicone resins are produced herein, which exhibit a high degree of reconstitution, in forms such as powders and flakes. The degree of reconstitution is judged by the fact that silicone resin/fluid alloys produced therefrom exhibit only a minor shift in Tg, the glass transition temperatureo analagons alloys produced from solvent dispersed (virgin) resin. Resin, and preferably virgin re...

A moldable pulp material, which contains a main constituent of pulp comprising strips of paper having a size of millimeters and a fibrous component defibrated from waste paper, a starch binder in which a portion of the hydroxyl group in molecules of starch is modified, and thermally expandable hollow particles, is mixed with water which is effective to gelatinize the starch binder. The moldable pu...

The invention relates to a device for braking and/or jamming an axially movable and/or rotatable cylindrical body. The device for braking and/or jamming has a carrier (3), provided with jamming elements (24, 43) and arranged coaxially to the cylindrical body (16), and an actuating member (9), likewise arranged coaxially with the cylindrical body (16) and displaceable relative to the said body...

A semiconductive rubber foam having a volume resistivity that can be controlled to a practical level and retaining an initial softness even after the lapse of time, is obtained by foaming and curing a rubber composition comprising 100 parts by weight of a chlorinated ethylene/ alpha -olefin copolymer rubber and 10 to 50 parts by weight of carbon black. The volume resistivity of this semiconductive...

An air core inductor (10) having mounted thereon a band (20) of material of selected characteristics providing only an electromagnetically coupled resistance that reflects back into the windings of the inductor for filtering applications.