Appeal No. 2002-2210
Application 09/553,295
Appellant’s invention relates to a method of grinding a
glass workpiece and, more particularly, to a “ductile grinding”
process wherein there is careful control of the amount of
grinding force exerted on the glass surface (specification, pages
1-3). As noted on page 1 of the specification, during the
forming process, defects such as mold lines, rough surfaces,
small points and other small imperfections may be present on the
outer surface of the glass. Known processes of abrasive
finishing are used to remove such imperfections, with those
processes typically comprising processes categorized as grinding,
lapping, fining and polishing. “Grinding” is used to remove
large amounts of glass quickly while leaving as fine a scratch
pattern as the tooling and abrasive materials used will allow.
Any scratches and other surface imperfections left from the rough
grinding process are then removed during subsequent processing
steps known as “fining” and “polishing.” As is made clear
numerous times throughout the specification, we again emphasize
that appellant’s invention in the present application addresses a
method of grinding a glass workpiece and, more specifically,
represents a refinement of the ductile grinding process (see, for
example, page 7, lines 11-16 and page 27, lines 11+).
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