Appeal No. 95-0421
Application 07/880,702
A. The nature of the case
1. The subject matter of the invention is an automatic
control system for a sand classifying tank. (Paper 1 at 8.) The
classified sand in the tank is selectively removed and reblended
to meet various product specifications. (Paper 1 at 2-4.) The
sand is selectively removed using valves that open into separate
product flumes for a controlled amount of time. (Paper 1 at 3.)
One object of the invention is to speed up the initialization
routine for the valve timers. (Paper 1 at 8-9.)
2. All of the independent claims are written in Jepson
format. Representative claim 1 sets forth the improvement over
the prior art as follows:
starting a set-up time counter that will determine
how long the incoming feed will be monitored during
operation of the tank;
counting and storing in a data storage means total
valve-open time for at least one valve at each station from
the time the timer initialization routine begins until the
time the set-up time counter reaches the set-up duration
limit;
loading the valve-open time data into the
computing means;
in the computing means, sorting the valve-open
time data to identify the most active station,
normalizing all other station valve-open times to the
time of the most active station, multiplying the
normalized valve-open times at each station by the base
minimum timer setting to produce initialized minimum
timer settings, multiplying the initialized minimum
timer settings by the standard maximum-to-minimum timer
- 2 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007