Appeal No. 1997-2075 Page 5
Application No. 08/362,362
Vaccari discloses a method of laser shock peening a
turbine engine part including firing a pair of stationary
pulsed laser beams at portions of two sides of a turbine
blade to vaporize material at the portions' surfaces to
create regions having deep compressive residual stresses
and flowing a curtain of water over the surface.
Overlapping beam spots are used to laser shock peen
larger surfaces.
Vaccari does not disclose moving the part while the
beams are firing.
Referring to col. 2 lines 42-45, lines 59-60, and
col. 2 line 65 through col. 3, lines 4, Duley shows that
it was known in the art to perform similar laser beam
treatment on large surfaces of parts by continuously
moving the part while firing the laser beam, where the
part is moved and the beam fired to produce more than one
row of overlapping linearly aligned offset beam spots.
The appellant has not contested the above-noted factual
findings of the examiner.
After ascertaining the teachings of Vaccari and Duley,
the examiner determined (final rejection, pp. 2-3) that
[i]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time the invention was made to use the
part moving processes shown by Duley with the laser shock
peening process of Vaccari to allow large parts to be
rapidly laser shock peened over their entire surface.
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