Conveyors: power-driven – With means to facilitate working – treating – or inspecting...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-24
2001-07-31
Noland, Kenneth W. (Department: 3651)
Conveyors: power-driven
With means to facilitate working, treating, or inspecting...
C414S751100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06267220
ABSTRACT:
RELATED APPLICATIONS
The present application claims priority of a U.S. Provisional Application filed concurrently with the instant application on Sep. 24, 1999, entitled “FLANGE FEEDER FOR WOODEN I-BEAM ASSEMBLY MACHINE”, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to improved apparatus and methods of making wooden I-beams from a pair of wood flanges and web members interconnecting the flanges and, more particularly, to an improved flange feeder for conveying either pre-grooved or non-grooved flange members into an infeed section of the I-beam assembly machine.
2. Background Art
Fabricated wooden I-beams each comprising a pair of wooden flanges and web members having longitudinal edges received in grooves of the flanges are becoming increasingly popular due to the rising costs of sawn lumber and the scarcity of good quality wood capable of producing beams of large size. The fabricated wooden I-beams require less wood and also reduces the cost of transportation due to their lower weight. Wooden I-beams of this type have been disclosed extensively in the prior art with exemplary patents being U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,490,188; 4,074,498; 4,191,000; 4,195,462; 4,249,355; 4,336,678; 4,356,045; 4,413,459; 4,456,497; and 4,458,465.
Prior known procedures for forming fabricated wooden I-beams by gluing the members together have generally entailed the use of various conveyor and drive assemblies in which a series of webs are driven along a conveyor line in either spaced or end to end abutting relationship, with a pair of grooved flanges driven along opposite sides of the web conveyor. The flanges are driven with their grooves facing the webs and are gradually converged toward the conveyed webs so that the longitudinal web edges, usually pre-glued, enter the grooves to form an interconnecting glued joint therebetween.
FIG. 1
is a schematic plan view of a overall production line assembly for manufacturing wooden I-beams while
FIGS. 2A and 2B
are respectively elevational and top plan views of the wooden I-beam assembly of
FIG. 1
for which the flange feeder of the present invention may be used to feed flanges
12
A and
12
B into the assembly line
10
. These drawing illustrations are taken from U.S. Pat. No. 5,633,303 which issued to William M. Owens and Victor Croston on Jan. 11, 1996, the '303 patent being assigned to Globe Machine Manufacturing Company of Tacoma, Washington, the assignee of the present invention herein. The '303 patent is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
More specifically,
FIG. 1
is an illustration of an overall production area P utilizes assembly line
10
for making wooden I-beams having wood flanges or chords
12
A and
12
B (“flange(s)” and “chord(s)” are used interchangeably throughout this specification) and wooden web member
14
. The assembly line or machine
10
performs different operations to secure the identical flanges
12
A,
12
B to the series of webs
14
to form web-to-chord joints. Each web
14
is preferably formed of plywood or oriented strand board (“OSB”) which is a form of flakeboard wherein strains of wood are oriented, overlapped and secured together by suitable glues to achieve strength properties superior to plywood or the like. The webs
14
may be of varying thickness and, in the assembled wooden I-beams, form a plurality of abutted sheets of such boards. The sheets
14
are rectangular having a long dimension along a longitudinal axis which is substantially parallel to the longitudinal axes of the elongated flanges
12
A,
12
B. The webs
14
form butt joints with one another preferably secured together with adhesive or glue.
Each flange
12
A,
12
B has a generally rectangular or square cross-section perpendicular to its longitudinal axis. The flanges
12
A,
12
B may be formed of commercially available wooden structural boards or may be formed of laminated veneer lumber (“LVL”) which is readily available in a large variety of lengths and thicknesses. The flanges are cut from rectangular stock material and provided with grooves either off the assembly line
10
at a flange forming area in a known manner, or within the assembly line as described in the aforementioned '303 patent. The flanges are discharged onto an outfeed table for transfer to a flange feed location via a lateral conveyor ramp. The flanges are respectively grouped on opposite sides of a roll case
16
for feeding into the assembly machine
10
along opposite left and right hand sides thereof.
The individual web members
14
are pre-cut to desired length and width and undergo a beveling operation whereby the upper and lower longitudinal edges are beveled or tapered to respectively interfit with the flange grooves as described in the '303 patent. The grooves preferably have the same cross-section as the web beveled edges or may have other cross-sections as known in the art. The web forming steps may occur off-line, as known in the art, in a web-forming area generally designated by reference letter W. In that area, the web-to-web joints are also profiled. The formed webs
14
are conveyed to the assembly machine
10
for positioning as a stack within a web hopper located downstream from the flange infeed location.
The flanges
12
A,
12
B are conveyed respectively along the opposite sides of the webs
14
which is formed as a continuous web in the assembly line
10
. The flanges
12
A,
12
B are gradually converged (in the area downstream from section lines
14
—
14
in
FIG. 2B
) toward the continuous web
14
so that the beveled edges enter the grooves to form press-fitted interconnecting joints therebetween and thereby the wooden I-beam. The beveled edges and grooves are preferably glued prior to joining. The wooden I-beam may optionally be passed through a radio frequency tunnel as is well know which cures the glued joints of the I-beam. The I-beam is discharged onto an outfeed table provided with a flying cut-off saw
16
cutting the beam to desired length. The cut beams are transferred laterally from the outfeed table by means of a cross transfer conveyor C which provides a minimum cure dwell time before the beams are ultimately stacked and bundled at station B for subsequent shipment.
In the aforementioned web assembly machine, as well as other web assembly machines of which I am aware, it is important to provide a continuous supply of elongated flanges
12
A,
12
B into the flange infeed area so that these flanges may be successively fed into the left and right hand sides of the machine with a minimal gap between the trailing edge of one fed flange and the leading end of the next in-line fed flange. Control over the gap distance between these successively spaced trailing and leading ends is important to ensure that the flange infeed drive can properly accelerate these ends into abutting contact before they are permanently joined to the web edges to form the assembled machine.
In the prior art flange infeed assemblies of which I am aware, overhead guide chutes or channels are used to drop successively fed flanges in the left and right hand sides of the flange infeed area to create a series of stacked flanges as a result of the waterfall or cascading effect. Unfortunately, as a result of the flanges being fed through these individual curved overhead guide chutes, the flanges tended to twist causing the trailing end thereof to bind or jam in the overhead chute or the channel therebelow which necessitated considerable down time while the jam was manually cleared.
As a result of the stacking of the flanges on top of each other at both the left and right hand sides of the machine, considerable pressure was placed on the bottommost flanges from the weight of the stacked flanges making it difficult if not impossible to accelerate the flange in the infeed flange drive from underneath the stack. Consequently, problems with closing the gaps between the flanges were frequent and often resulted in commercially unacceptable product.
Other flange infeed systems h
Globe Machine Manufacturing Company
Lowe Hauptman & Gilman & Berner LLP
Noland Kenneth W.
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