Spiral forming
AssigneeKeystone Tower Systems, Inc.
InventorsEric D. Smith, Rosalind K. Takata, Daniel Ainge, Loren Daniel Bridgers
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Spiral forming methods can be used to join edges of a rolled material along a spiral joint to form conical and/or cylindrical structures. Alignment of the edges of the rolled material can be controlled in a wrapping direction as the material is being joined along the spiral joint to form the structure. By controlling alignment of the edges of the material as the edges of the material are being joined, small corrections can be made over the course of forming the structure facilitating control over geometric tolerances of the resulting spiral formed structure.
Claims13
A system comprising:
- a plurality of rollers positioned relative to one another to bend a continuous material moving through the plurality of rollers into a curved form having an edge-to-edge abutting relationship of a first edge region and a second edge region of the continuous material along a spiral joint;
- at least one sensor arranged relative to the continuous material exiting the plurality of rollers to detect position information of the first edge region and the second edge region along the spiral joint;
- one or more pushers actuatable to move relative to the continuous material to impart a normal force to the continuous material along the spiral joint;
- and
- a controller in communication with the at least one sensor and the at least one pusher, the controller configured to
- receive, from the at least one sensor, the position information of the first edge region and the second edge region,
- determine a relative position of the first edge region to the second edge region based on the position information, and
- based upon the relative position of the first edge region to the second edge region, actuate the one or more pushers relative to the curved form of continuous material to control an out-of-plane gap between the first edge region and the second edge region along the spiral joint.
A computer program product encoded on one or more non-transitory computer storage media, the computer program product comprising instructions that, when executed by one or more computing devices, cause the one or more computing devices to perform operations comprising:
- receiving position information of a first edge region and a second edge region, the first edge region in an edge-to-edge abutting relationship with the second edge region along a portion of a spiral joint formed in a curved form of a rolled material;
- determining, based on the position information, whether the first edge region matches the second edge region to within a predetermined tolerance;
- and
- actuating one or more edge pushers to control an out-of-plane gap between the first edge region and the second edge region if the first edge region and the second edge region in the edge-to-edge abutting relationship along the portion of the spiral joint do not match one another to within the predetermined tolerance.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.