Appeal No. 96-2649
Application 08/418,875
would have suggested a method meeting the limitations in
dependent claims 2, 5, 6, 8 through 10, 13, 14 and 16 through 18.
Claims 24 through 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Portal, applied as discussed above in
connection with the examiner’s rejection of claims 19, 20 and 28,
and further in view of Clausen.
Clausen discloses a method of manufacturing a heat exchange
manifold “comprising a hollow body having a plurality of hollow
risers for connection to heat exchanger tubes” (column 1, lines 7
through 9). As summarized by Clausen, the method includes
providing [a] hollow shape with a plurality of
individual risers each having a substantially solid
[cylindrical] cross-section. Subsequently, the risers
are re-shaped by means of a reverse impact extrusion
process into hollow [cylindrical] risers. Finally, by
perforating the wall of the hollow shape under the
hollow risers, apertures are provided constituting
inlets connecting the cavity of the hollow shape with
the individual hollow risers” (Abstract).
The starting hollow shape with the plurality of solid cylindrical
risers is produced by an extrusion or drawing step followed by a
cold forming pressing step (see column 3, lines 5 through 20).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to further modify the Portal method by configuring the die to
form a plurality of individual risers each having a substantially
solid cylindrical cross-section and by adding a reverse impact
-11-
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007