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US 5,133,491 AGranted
Substrate breaker
AssigneeDie Tech, Inc.
InventorsThomas R. Correll, Richard K. Dennis
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A substrate breaker positively feeds substrate plates to a stick breaker where the sticks are broken from the plate. The sticks are fed upwardly to an elevated chip breaker where chips are broken from the sticks.
Claims20
A substrate breaker comprising:
- a) elevated chip breaker means for breaking a lead chip from a stick of chips;
- b) stick breaker means located below the chip breaker means for breaking a stick of chips from a substrate plate;
- c) a stick feed path extending upwardly from the stick breaker means to the chip breaker means;
- and
- d) stick feed means for moving a stick of chips up the path.
2 more elements
A substrate breaker including a stick assembly having an upwardly extending stick feed path with opposed stick grooves for receiving the edges of a stick;
- a chip breaker at the upper end of the feed path;
- a stick breaker at the lower end of the feed path having a plate groove for receiving a lead edge of a stick, the plate groove forming a downward extension of one of the path grooves;
- a plate assembly including a plate feed path extending toward the stick breaker and a pair of opposed plate feed grooves for receiving the edges of a ceramic chip plate, a plate feeder for moving a plate along the plate feed path to position the lead edge of a stick in the plate groove;
- a stick feeder for engaging the end of a stick near the stick breaker and moving such stick into and along the stick feed path to position successive lead chips in the chip breaker.
1 more element
The method of breaking a substrate plate into individual substrate chips comprising the steps of:
- a) successively breaking lead sticks from the plate, each stick including an integral row of substrate chips;
- b) allowing plate debris formed by breaking to gravity fall away from the sticks;
- c) moving each lead stick upwardly from the remainder of the substrate plate;
- and
- d) breaking individual chips from an elevated end of each stick.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.