Reference
Terms used in this catalog
Grouped the way a factory works: the product, what goes inside it, the paper around it, and how a machine is specified and shipped.
The product
- Cake
- A multishot battery. Tubes fused together so one ignition fires the whole sequence. Also called a barrage.
- Canister shell
- A cylindrical aerial shell. Easier to build in volume than a sphere and common in consumer and display product.
- Display shell
- A spherical aerial shell, sized by diameter in inches. Fired from a mortar and broken by a bursting charge.
- Snap pop
- A small throw-down novelty. Composition and gravel twisted into paper.
- Sparkler
- Iron wire coated in a slow burning composition, sized by length in inches.
- Slice
- A cake fired as a single row rather than a block.
- Mortar
- The tube an aerial shell is fired from. It contains the lifting charge and directs the shell.
Inside the shell
- Bursting charge
- The internal charge that breaks the shell at the set time and spreads and ignites the stars. The trade also calls this the break charge, and both terms appear on machine names.
- Lifting charge
- The charge beneath the shell that propels it out of the mortar. Also written lift charge.
- Star
- A pellet of composition, usually a cylinder, cube or sphere, that burns as a point of color. Rolled in a pan or pressed in a die.
- Comet
- A solid cylinder of composition pressed in a die. It burns as a single large star with a long tail.
- Pellet
- A pressed component smaller than a comet.
- Effect composition
- The chemical mix that produces the color or effect.
Tubes and casings
- Casing
- The paper body of a shell or tube.
- Clay plug
- The pressed clay base that seals one end of a tube, usually bentonite. Pressed under load so it holds against the charge.
- ID and OD
- Inside diameter and outside diameter. Tube sizes are quoted as ID x OD x length in millimeters.
- Inner tube
- The tube that holds the effect. Sits inside the outer casing on a cake.
- Outer tube
- The casing tube that holds the loaded inner tube.
- Kraft paper
- Heavy unbleached paper used for tube rolling and shell wrapping.
- Paper disc
- A pressed paper plug used to separate or close a tube, with or without a center hole for fuse.
On the machine
- Bundle
- A group of tubes strapped together so the press fills them in one stroke.
- Die
- The tool that gives a pressed component its finished shape and size.
- Mandrel
- The rod a tube is rolled onto. The mandrel sets the tube diameter.
- Matrix
- The tooling set for a press, quoted as a list of sizes.
- Numerical control
- Machine settings held in a controller rather than set by hand.
- Stroke
- One full cycle of a press.
- Throughput
- Output per unit of time, quoted here as the factory rate multiplied out.
Shipping and power
- CBM
- Cubic meter. Freight is charged on the greater of volume or weight.
- FCL and LCL
- Full container load and less than container load.
- Gross weight
- The weight of the machine plus its crate.
- HQ
- High cube. A 40 ft HQ container is one foot taller than a standard 40 ft.
- Phase
- Single, two or three phase supply. Three phase is standard for industrial motors.
- Crate size
- The outside dimensions of the packed machine. Freight is quoted on this, not on the machine’s floor space.
How figures are written
- Tube sizes
- ID x OD x length in millimeters. 20 x 25 x 150 is a 20 mm bore, 25 mm outside, 150 mm long.
- Machine sizes
- Length x width x height in centimeters. Where a machine ships in more than one crate, each crate is listed and the volumes are added.
- Output
- The factory’s own rate, then multiplied out over one 8 hour shift and 22 working days.
Where the factory and the trade use different words for the same thing, the machine name follows the factory and this page gives the trade term. Every specification figure is the manufacturer’s own.