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US 2016/0107213 A1Published application
Tapered structure construction
AssigneeKeystone Tower Systems, Inc.
InventorsEric D. Smith, Rosalind K. Takata, Alexander H. Slocum, Samir A. Nayfeh
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Feeding stock used to form a tapered structure into a curving device such that each point on the stock undergoes rotational motion about a peak location of the tapered structure; and the stock meets a predecessor portion of stock along one or more adjacent edges.
Claims17
A device for fabricating a frusto-conical structure from segments of planar stock, the frusto-conical structure having a virtual peak located at a point where a taper of the frusto-conical structure would decrease to zero if the frusto-conical structure were not truncated, the device comprising:
- a source of a stock in planar form having a first edge and a second edge;
- a curving device operable to impart a controllable curvature to the stock without imparting in-plane deformation;
- a feed system operable to transport the stock from the source to the curving device in a feed direction, the feed system varying an in-feed position of the stock so that the stock exits the curving device with the first edge at a position adjacent to the second edge of a prior portion of the stock curved by the curving device;
- a joiner operable to join the first edge to the second edge at the position;
- and
- a control system to control operation of the curving device, the feed system, and the joiner to form planar metal stock from the source into the frusto-conical structure.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.