The O'Neill Bottle Machine

This is an article from the trade journal The Glass Industry (Vol. 2, No. 7, July 1921, 178-179) describing the new O'Neill automatic bottle blowing machine. Lynchburg Glass Works is listed as having recently installed this machine. A notice in the trade journal National Glass Budget (Vol. 36, No. 44, p. 6, col. 2, March 5, 1921) notes that "The Lynchburg Glass Works will improve its plant by the installation of new machinery." Also, a notice in the journal Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering (Volume 24, Jan. 10-June 30, 1921, 411) notes that "The Lynchburg Glass Works is planning for extensions and improvements in its plant for Increased production. New machinery will be installed." Presumably these include the installation of the O'Neill No. 30 Bottle Machine. In a Lynchburg Glass Corporation brochure from around 1924, they advertised that their equipment included "One O'Neill No. 30 Automatic Bottle Blowing Machine."

A New Automatic Bottle Blowing Machine

A new automatic glass blowing machine, the latest creation of Frank O’Neill, president of The O’Neill Machine Company, Toledo, Ohio, and known as “No. 30,” is about three quarters the size of the standard “No. 25” and operates at an air pressure of 35 pounds.  It is designed along lines similar to No. 25, but carries only five blanks while the No. 25 has six.

In speed the new model runs from 18 to 20 per minute and the manufacturers state that under good working conditions it will even do better. 

O'Neill No. 30 Machine at Maryland Glass Corporation, Baltimore Maryland, one of three connected to feeder

O'Neill No. 25 connected to single feeder at Maryland Glass Corporation, Baltimore Maryland

It can be used with any feeder and the makes point out that it has been thoroughly tested out also with hand feeding.  The new machine is intended for small ware ranging from ½ ounce up to 12 ounces capacity, and 8 inches in height under the finish.  Among its new features are a stationary cam to open the blank as it approaches the transfer point, which saves considerable time in transferring: a double finish blowing arrangement, which prevents bottles and thin ware from sagging.  It also helps to set the glass, so that it will be in better conditions to rest on the conveyor.  This double blow arrangement can be disconnected so only one blow head will operate.  The No. 30 machine also introduces a new type of take-off device.  The take-off device lifts the bottle from the mold in a vertical, radial motion, just the same as a boy would take it out with a pair of tongs.  Most take-off devices are either a horizontal slide, or have a horizontal radial motion, and as everyone knows, this causes the bottle to swing in the gripping tongs, thereby, in some cases, causing cheeks in the neck, or bending it.

The larger cut shows one of a battery of three No. 30 machines connected with a feeder and making a well known proprietary bottle.  The small cut shows a standard No. 25 machine connected to a single feeder, which, on its first twenty-four hour run, made a production of 18 per minute on 5 ¼ ounce bottles.

Blow or finish molds which have been used on the No. 25 machine can readily be adapted to the No. 30, and in quite a number of cases it will be possible to use the blank or parison mold.

It is interesting to trace the development of the O’Neill machines from the first type built years ago, through various intermediate stages, each bringing the model nearer to the automatic until now when, attached to a feeder, the machine is absolutely automatic.  Further developments with a view to saving labor are coming, according to F. E. H. Jaeger, secretary of The O’Neill Machine Company, who states that it will only be a short time until O’Neill machines are absolutely automatic from tank to conveyor.

The company’s Toledo plant, where the machines are made, is housed in a modern day-light factory with every convenience possible for its employees.  The building is fire-proof, equipped with a sprinkler system, and its employees have access to a lunch room in the building where good, wholesome food is supplied at a moderate cost.

[photos of Officers of the O'Neill Machine Company omitted]

Besides having the plant taxed to its limit by domestic orders, the foreign business of the company has become so large that last year a plant was opened at Albany Works, Trenmar Gardens, London, England, with Wilson M. O’Neill, vice-president, in charge.  This puts the company in an excellent position to look after its extensive foreign trade in machines and molds.  During the past year the company shipped machines to England, Scotland, France, Switzerland, India, Canada, Mexico, Argentine Republic, Venezuela, Brazil and Japan,  Some recent installations in the United States were at the Hazel-Atlas Glass plant, Washington, Pa.; the Hygeia Glass Corporation, Lancaster, N. Y.; Salem Glass Works, Salem, N. J.; Maryland Glass Corporation, Baltimore, Md.; Lynchburg Glass Works, Lynchburg, Va.; American Glass Works, Richmond, Va.; Nivison-Weiskopf Company, Reading O., and the Sheffield Glass Bottle Company, Sheffield, Pa.