Apparatus for making self-gripping air turning vanes

Abstract

A method for making air turning vanes each having formed therein a pair of locking protuberances which adapt the vanes to self-gripping attachment between a pair of rails to fabricate an air turning vane and rail assembly utilizes an elongated length of double plate airfoil vane stock including a front plate having an outer concave surface arcuately bowed about the central longitudinal axis of the plate, and a rear plate having an outer concave surface arcuately bowed about the central longitudinal axis of the rear plate. A vane of a desired length is severed from the vane stock, and the outer concave surface of the rear vane plate is impacted by a punch with sufficient force to deform from the inner surface of the plate a generally hemispherically-shaped button having a lower severed wall which forms a locking lip. The apparatus according to the present invention includes a guillotine-like shearing structure/vane stock support fixture which vertically slidably supports shear blade. The fixture has through front and rear walls thereof longitudinally aligned, crescent-shaped apertures for longitudinally slidably receiving vane stock. A pair of longitudinally aligned, downwardly pointing punches attached to the front and rear surfaces of the shear blade, rearward or upward from a wedge-shaped piercing point of the shear blade, are effective in forming a locking protuberance forward of the rear transverse edge of a severed vane, and a locking protuberance in the vane stock, rearward of the front transverse edge of the vane stock, when the shear blade is forced sharply downward to sever a vane from a length of vane stock.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.