Wire wound threaded elements including lead screws, roller not assemblies and process
AssigneeHughes Electronics Corporation
InventorGabor Devenyi
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Producing novel threaded members such as lead screws (10, 20) by winding and anchoring a hardened tempered spring wire (14, 16) around a support body such as a screw shaft (11, 15) to form a hard, smooth thread comprising a wear-resistant running surface for engagement with a bearing nut member (43) in an adjustment assembly (30), such as for a zoom lens. The shaft (11) may be shallow-grooved (13) to determine the pitch of the threads. Alternatively the shaft (15) may be wound with contacting thread wire (16) and spacer wire (17) to determine the pitch of the thread.
Claims13
A threaded member comprising a support body having tightly wound over the surface thereof, and fastened thereto, a pair of contacting wires, one wire in said pair forming on said body a helical thread and being made of hardened tempered spring wire, the other wire in said pair being a smaller diameter spacer wire which contacts adjacent convolutions of said spring wire and controls the pitch of said thread.
A threaded member comprising a support body having a shallow helical groove with a desired pitch, and a spring wire is wound under tension onto said shallow helical groove to form a helical thread.
An assembly comprising a screw member having a flexible support body having tightly wound over the surface thereof, and fastened thereto, a pair of contacting wires, one wire in said pair forming on said body a wear-resistant, rounded-surface helical thread and being made of hardened tempered spring wire, the other wire in said pair being a smaller diameter spacer wire which contacts adjacent convolutions of said spring wire and controls the pitch of said thread;
- and a nut member having a surface which engages said helical thread and moves therealong during relative rotation of said members.
The process for producing a lead screw which comprises:
- cutting a smooth shaft to receive a pair of wires,
- winding said pair of wires simultaneously around said shaft under tension to set the pitch of screw threads, and
- fastening said pair of wires to said shaft.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.