Coating thickness control

Abstract

An air knife mouth arrangement for use in an air knife assembly having a laterally extending mouth through which pressurized fluid passes to operate on a coating applied to a surface of a sheet material passing the mouth in a longitudinal direction to control the thickness of the coating. In the preferred form of the invention shown the air knife mouth arrangement comprises a mouth defined by a pair of facing lips, each lip having in front elevation a curved shape along its length. The curved shapes of the two lips face each other. The lips of the air knife mouth arrangement are selectively laterally displaceable relative to each other by a moving means so as to thereby vary the separation of the lips and hence the width of the mouth along the length of the mouth. It is to be noted that the term “length” refers to the dimension of the mouth in the lateral direction (indicated by the X axis), while the term “width” refers to the dimension of the mouth in the longitudinal direction (indicated by the Y axis).

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.