Appeal No. 96-0162
Application 08/030,806
cross sections of such dimensions that the
stiffness of said coupling with respect to a
bending moment applied between said first
connecting means and said second connecting
means in a plane containing said rotational
axes of said driving and driven members is
substantially uniform for all angles of said
plane about said rotational axis of said
driving member.
Appellant’s specification teaches that in prior art flex frames
as the input shaft was rotated the stiffness exhibited by the
flex frame to the deflection imposed on it varied with the
rotational angle of the coupling and that such variation caused
the coupling to produce cyclic excitations which lead to shaking
or vibration (Specification at pages 2-3 and 8). To solve this
problem, in appellant’s flex frame, the stiffness of each
individual flex frame is such that if the driving end connecting
means is fixed, a given bending moment applied to the driven end
connecting means will angularly deflect the axes by the same or
near the same amount regardless of the angular direction of the
bending moment applied to the connecting means.
Appellant has disclosed several ways to accomplish this
goal. In a first embodiment, the coupling may be an iso-
stiffness frame in which the frame exhibits nearly uniform
stiffness throughout a complete revolution of the coupling when
flexed by the angular misalignment between the driving and driven
shafts (Specification at page 10). In other embodiments, the
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007