Roller mechanism for forming helical shapes

A roller mechanism for forming elongated helical-shaped structures using multiple forming rollers, comprising:

• (a) a support frame having a fixed lower member and an adjustable upper member, each member being provided with means for receiving parallel multiple rollers;
• (b) at least four fixed position driven parallel rollers spaced apart from each other and rotatably mounted in said lower frame member, and at least five idler parallel rollers spaced apart from each other and mounted in said adjustable upper frame member in a vertically non-aligned or staggered relationship relative to said driven rollers;
• wherein the vertical adjustment between the roller sets is progressively decreased for the succeeding rollers, said lower rollers being rotatably driven for drawing a feed wire through the multiple rotating mating staggered forming rollers solely by a frictional drawing force exerted on the wire by said multiple forming rollers, and thereby form the wire passed through the rollers into a sinusoidal pattern;
• (c) drive means coupling together all said driven rollers so as to rotate said driven rollers at a common surface speed;
• and
• (d) means for rotating the feed wire about its own axis while being drawn through said forming rollers, so as to produce a helical-shaped structural product.