Appeal No. 97-1761 Page 7
Application No. 08/380,223
center of the coil spring bends. Yano further teaches that
his coil spring having two coil wires solves the bending
moment problem.
Kuhl discloses a helical spring. As shown in Figure 1,
the spring 1 has three turns 2, 3 and 4 between end members 8
and 9.
The declaration of Pruitt establishes: (1) linear
compressors have been in development from the middle 1960's;
(2) wear out life of linear compressors has been a significant
concern through this development; (3) the prior art linear
compressor exhibited piston wear at the rate of 400 millionths
of an inch per thousand hours of operation and an associated
loss of compression ratio of 25% after 4,000 hours; (4) this
same compressor, after replacing the single coil spring with a
double helix spring, exhibited piston wear at the rate of less
than 60 millionths of an inch per thousand hours of operation
and an associated loss of compression ratio of 7% after 15,700
hours; (4) prior workers in this field, including Magnavox and
Texas Instruments, have tried for many years to solve the
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