Appeal No. 2002-1572
Application No. 09/286,088
compressed. Of particular note is Haas’ teaching that the
compression stroke ends when the pressure plate 1, 12 engages the
stop members 9 mounted on the base plate 2 (see column 3, lines
28 through 30 and 69 through 72).
As conceded by the examiner (see page 4 in the answer), the
molding method disclosed by Haas does not meet the limitation in
claim 7 requiring the forming step to be terminated “when a pre-
determined molding pressure is applied” to the sheet of material
being produced. To overcome this deficiency, the examiner turns
to Fukuoka.
Fukuoka discloses a compression molding apparatus for making
disk brake friction pads. The apparatus consists of a fixed
upper mold 10, a lower mold 14 mounted on a ram 16 and a tubular
center mold 12 elastically mounted to the lower mold 14 by
springs 26. In use, the center mold 12 is positioned relative to
the lower mold 14 to form a mold cavity (see Figure 1), the
friction pad matrix or mixture M is filled into the cavity, and
the ram 16 is actuated to move the center mold 12 into contact
with the upper mold 10 and the lower mold relative to the center
mold against the pressure of the springs 26 to compress the
matrix M (see Figure 2).
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