Appeal No. 2001-2689
Application No. 09/215,021
of allowing the crimp rolls 70, 72 to be mechanically coupled
while permitting complete freedom of movement of the rolls
without affecting their timing and without gear backlash. In
order to move one crimp roll relative to the other, appellant’s
machine is provided with an adjustment mechanism, best seen in
Figure 8, comprising a chain drive for simultaneously driving
shafts 148 and 174. It appears that these shafts are in turn
coupled to screw and nut drive units (see Figure 7) that are
connected to the ends of the shaft of the lower crimp roll 70 so
that the shaft ends move together to maintain the alignment of
the crimp rolls. In addition, an electronic encoder 82 is used
to determine the position of the crimp rolls relative to each
other, which position in turn determines the depth of the folds
in the bottom portion of the formed panel, and thus the extent of
curvature of the formed panel (column 5, lines 54-57).
In that the above noted elements play a key role in
adjusting the position of the crimp rolls relative to each other,
and in that adjustment of the position of the crimp rolls
directly brings about the variation of the depth of the folds in
the bottom portion of the formed panel to thereby vary the extent
of curvature of the formed panel, the question arises as to
whether at least some of these elements are part of the
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