Adhesive bonding and miscellaneous chemical manufacture – Surface bonding means and/or assembly means therefor – With cutting – punching – piercing – severing – or tearing
Reexamination Certificate
1999-02-01
2003-06-10
Gray, Linda (Department: 1734)
Adhesive bonding and miscellaneous chemical manufacture
Surface bonding means and/or assembly means therefor
With cutting, punching, piercing, severing, or tearing
C156S517000, C156S563000, C156S583200, C156S264000, C156S248000, C156S257000, C156S268000, C156S345420
Reexamination Certificate
active
06575218
ABSTRACT:
TERMINOLOGY
Conveyed-Adherent: Referring to the method of automated fabrication described herein, in which successive patterns of fabrication material are formed on a substrate, and then the patterns of fabrication material are conveyed on the substrate into successive positions, and then the substrate is removed from the fabrication material. Conveyed-Adherent autofab may be implemented in either a fully additive or in a hybrid fashion. “Conveyed-Adherent” is a trademark of Ennex Fabrication Technologies of Los Angeles.
Carried-Sheet: Referring to a hybrid implementation of Conveyed-Adherent autofab in which the fabrication material is supplied in sheet form, and in which the patterns of fabrication material are determined by cutting the shapes of the patterns into successive pieces of the sheet material. “Carried-Sheet” is a trademark of Ennex Fabrication Technologies of Los Angeles.
Fabrication medium: Sheet material moving through a Conveyed-Adherent fabricator, consisting of adjacent substrate and fabrication material. The material moving through a fabricator may be sliced into individual segments of fabrication medium, or it may be a long, continuous fabrication medium containing the fabrication material for many successive layers.
Positive region: The region of space which is or will be occupied by a fabricated object or by material which will form part of a fabricated object.
Positive material: Fabrication material which does or will occupy a positive region and therefore does or will compose a fabricated object or part of a fabricated object.
Negative region: The region of space complimentary to a positive region.
Negative material: Fabrication material which does or will occupy a negative region and will therefore be removed.
Weeding: Separation of negative material from positive material in a single layer of fabrication material in a Carried-Sheet fabricator, so called because it is the removal of unwanted material.
Lay-down: Establishment of contact of fabrication material with stack.
Peel-off: Incremental removal (peeling) of substrate from fabrication material.
Consequent peel-off: Stacking in which lay-down is completed before peel-off begins.
Concurrent peel-off: Stacking in which peel-off is begun while lay-down is still in progress.
Simultaneous peel-off: Concurrent peel-off in which peel-off at each point is approximately simultaneous with lay-down at that point.
Delayed peel-off: Concurrent peel-off in which peel-off at each point takes point with some delay after lay-down at that point.
Platen: In a stacker, device that imparts forces on a fabrication medium to enact lay-down and/or peel-off.
Face of a platen: Portion of the surface of the platen which contacts a fabrication medium.
Shape of a platen: Shape of the platen's face.
Holding device or holding system: In a stacker, device or system which controls the motion and tension of the fabrication medium during lay-down and peel-off.
Holding platen: Combination of a platen to which the fabrication medium is rigidly held and the portion of the holding system which so holds the fabrication medium.
Flat: Description of a smooth surface at a point through which two different straight lines can be drawn in the surface.
Singly curved (having single curvature): Description of a smooth surface at a point through which only one straight line can be drawn in the surface.
Axis of curvature at a point of a singly curved surface: The one straight line which can be drawn in the surface through that point.
Doubly curved (having double curvature): Description of a smooth surface at a point through which no straight line can be drawn.
Radius of action: In a lay-down or peel-off action being performed by any kind of complicated platen system, the radius of a roller that would provide approximately the same configuration of forces as are actually being applied.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for automatic fabrication of three-dimensional objects from a plurality of individual layers of fabrication material stacked together in sequence to form the object. More particularly, the invention relates to the use of a substrate to convey each layer to a station where these layers are affixed to each other and then the substrate is removed.
2. Background Discussion
The idea of automated fabrication of three-dimensional solid objects dates back at least to the 18th century, when a pantograph-like device was used in France to copy medallions. James Watt later built several machines, based on the same principal, capable of carving full human busts. Over the past 45 years, machining, lathe-turning and grinding devices have been placed under computer control (called “CNC” for “computer-numerical control”) to allow the generation of original shapes from designs entered into computers by engineers using computer-aided design (CAD) software. These processes are called “subtractive” fabrication, because they start with a solid block of material and generate the desired shape by removing material from the block.
Since the subtractive processes work by applying a cutting tool to a solid block, they have the common disadvantage of being limited in the shapes that they can generate. Intricate or nested structures are difficult or impossible to build by these methods. A more modern approach is “additive” fabrication in which a fluid or powdered material is solidified or congealed in successive small regions or layers to form the desired object. This idea goes back at least to the photo-relief process of Baese (U.S. Pat. No. 774,549), and has been substantially refined through dual-laser photopolymerization of Swainson (Danish Patent Application 3611), liquid droplet deposition of Masters (U.S. Pat. No. 4,665,492), single-laser photopolymerization of Andre (French Patent Application 84 11241) and Hull (U.S. Pat. No. 4,575,330), masked-lamp photopolymerization of Pomerantz (U.S. Pat. No. 4,961,154) and Fudim (U.S. Pat. No. 5,135,379), laser sintering of Feygin (U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,352) and Deckard (U.S. Pat. No. 4,863,538), and robotically guided extrusion of Crump (U.S. Pat. No. 5,121,329).
There are also several hybrid processes which combine additive and subtractive processes. Usually this involves cutting or etching the contours of individual layers of an object, and stacking and binding the contours. The earliest use of such a process is that of Morioka (U.S. Pat. No. 2,015,457), and more recent refinements have been made by DiMatteo (U.S. Pat. No. 3,932,923), Feygin (U.S. Pat. No. 4,752,352), Kinzie (U.S. Pat. No. 5,015,312), and Berman (U.S. Pat. No. 5,071,503).
Sparx AB of Sweden and Schroff Development Corporation of Mission, Kans., have manufactured manual systems which use a substrate to carry a sheet of fabrication material bonded to a substrate. Individual layers of material are formed by cutting through the material, removing negative material, and, prior to affixing successive layers, removing the substrate. These systems are similar to a Carried-Sheet fabricator, except that their operation is not fully automated and therefore cannot achieve the accuracy, speed, and ease of use of a Carried-Sheet fabricator.
All of the prior additive and hybrid processes suffer from several or all of the following drawbacks:
(1) Accuracy and resolution are limited to the domain of about 0.1 millimeters (0.004 inch). One reason is the difficulty of controlling the action of a laser beam (whether for irradiating, as in Hull or Deckard, or for cutting, as in Feygin), a particle jet (as in Masters), or an extrusion head (as in Crump), plus the difficulty of compensating for the width of the laser beam, jet stream or extrusion bead. Another reason is the minimum thickness of a single layer that can be formed from the raw material liquid or powder, or the minimum thickness of the extrusion bead that can be laid down.
(2) In the fully additive processes, large regions of solid material take a long time to fabricate, slowing down the process for building structures with such large
Burns Marshall
Hayworth Kenneth J.
McGinnis Kim F.
Connors John J.
Connors & Assoc. Inc.
Gray Linda
LandOfFree
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