Appeal No. 1997-2986
Application No. 08/260,784
A. The invention
The invention relates to sorting and unloading finished
pieces of various sizes and shapes that have been cut from
sheet stock by a fabricating device. The specification
explains (at 8, lines 5-10) that some of the programs used to
control a fabricating device "are so-called 'nest' programs in
which the pieces to be cut from a sheet blank are predefined
according to their respective dimensions so that an optimal
number of pieces may be cut from the sheet blank." When, as
in the prior art, a plurality of such programs are run
sequentially, the finished parts produced under the control of
each program are sorted and directed to sorting addresses
predefined for them in the respective nest program, with each
sorting address referring to a location in the unloading area
of the part sorting and unloading system (Spec. at 2, lines
10-18).
One of the problems encountered in such system is that
where a large number of parts are to be produced, there may be
insufficient addresses (Spec. at 3, lines 3-5). Another
problem is that different nest programs may assign parts
having different dimensions to the same address, creating an
- 2 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007