Appeal No. 2004-1244
Application 10/085,280
II. The merits
Beusch, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses an ice
making apparatus for producing granular ice. As shown in Figure
1, the apparatus includes an extruder screw 1, a cooling jacket
inner wall member 6, a cooling jacket outer housing wall 7, a
space 13 between the member 6 and the wall 7 for receiving a
cooling medium, a cooling medium inlet port 8, a cooling medium
outlet port 9, and an annular extrusion plate 20 containing a
plurality of conical apertures 22. In use, water is fed into the
bottom of the cooling jacket, advanced upwardly by the extruder
screw, formed into ice/slush on the cold inner surface of the
cooling jacket, scraped off the inner surface by the screw and
advanced toward and through the conical apertures in the
extrusion plate.
The Beusch ice making apparatus meets all of the limitations
in representative claims 1 and 4 except for those requiring (1)
the evaporator body to have a continuous generally spiral groove
on its outer cylindrical surface terminating in a radial outward
edge (claim 1), (2) the evaporator jacket to be in interference
fit against the outward edge of the spiral groove sealingly
engaging the evaporator jacket against the evaporator body
whereby refrigerant entering into the groove is sealingly trapped
4
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