Appeal No. 1997-1162
Application 08/200,455
race mounted on it is shown in both Voll and Fruge. What is
missing is some teaching or suggestion that the sleeve having
the ball-running grooves could be formed as one-piece with the
rotor.
Both Voll and Fruge show a bearing cartridge having a
sleeve that is mounted into the rotor by shrink-fit (e.g.,
Fruge, col. 5, lines 8-20) or adhesive (e.g., Fruge, col. 9,
lines 31-33) or mounted into the stationary housing 5 (Voll).
The sleeves in Voll and Fruge are strong enough that they do
not need to be surrounded by a sleeve; e.g., the sleeve 36 in
Fruge is supported only at its top half by the hub 22 and the
sleeve 6 in Voll is supported only at its bottom half by the
axial section 5' of housing 5. Thus, the sleeves are
structural and more than just a common outer race which must
be supported by a sleeve. The sleeves in both Voll and Fruge
are clearly intended to be rigidly connected and made integral
with the housing (Voll) or the rotor (Fruge). There is a
teaching in Fruge that the shaft 28 and stator mount cup,
which are mounted by heat shrinking, "could be formed with as
monolithic (i.e., integral) structure from a single piece of
material" (col. 9, lines 25-26), which indicates that one of
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