Apparatus for and a method for fabricating a coriolis flowmeter formed primarily of plastic
AssigneeMicro Motion, Inc.
InventorsGregory Treat Lanham, Anthony Pankratz
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An injection molding process for fabricating a Coriolis flowmeter. The process includes the steps forming a material flow path core using a core mold, placing the formed material flow path core into a wrapper mold having a cavity whose surfaces define the exterior surface of the plastic Coriolis flowmeter structure to be formed, injecting low temperature metal or soluble material into the cavity of the wrapper mold, removing the plastic Coriolis flowmeter structure from the wrapper mold, and removing the material flow path core from the plastic Coriolis flowmeter by melting the low temperature metal core or by dissolving the soluble material using hot water.
Claims10
A method of fabricating structure of a Coriolis flowmeter including flow tube means;
- said method comprising the steps of:
- forming a core defining a material flow path of said flow tube means by injecting a low melting point metal into a cavity of a core mold with said cavity defining said material flow path;
- placing said formed material flow path core into a cavity of a wrapper mold and closing said wrapper mold to form a cavity between the outer surface of said formed material flow path core and the interior surface of said cavity of said wrapper mold;
- said cavity of said wrapper mold defines the outer surface of said flow tube means;
- filling said cavity of said wrapper mold with plastic to form a molded plastic flow tube means that contains said formed material flow path core;
- removing said molded plastic flow tube means containing said formed material flow path core from said wrapper mold;
- and
- removing said formed material flow path core from said molded plastic flow tube means by raising the temperature of said molded plastic flow tube means above the melting temperature of the low melting point metal forming said material flow path core.
A method of fabricating a Coriolis flowmeter having:
- flow tube means adapted to receive a material flow from a flowmeter inlet and to extend said material flow through said flow tube means to a flowmeter outlet;
- a driver for vibrating said flow tube means;
- pick off means coupled to said flow tube means for generating output signals representing Coriolis deflections of said vibrating flow tube means with material flow;
- meter electronics responsive to said output signals generated by said pick off means for generating output information pertaining to said material flow;
- and
- said flow tube means being formed of plastic to define a plastic wetted material flow path that extends through the entirety of the length of said flow tube means;
- said wetted material flow path further includes plastic flow tube means stubs each having a first end connected to ends of said flow tube means;
- a first one of said plastic flow tube means stubs has a second end adapted to receive said material flow;
- a second one of said plastic flow tube stubs has a second end adapted to discharge said material flow;
- said method of fabricating comprising the steps of:
- forming a core defining said material flow path by injecting soluble material into a cavity of a core mold with said cavity defining said material flow path;
- placing said formed material flow path core into a cavity of a wrapper mold and closing said wrapper mold to form a cavity between the outer surface of said formed material flow path core and the interior surface of said cavity of said wrapper mold;
- said cavity of said wrapper mold defines the outer surface of said flow tube means;
- filling said cavity of said wrapper mold with plastic to form a molded plastic flow tube means that contains said formed material flow path core;
- removing said molded plastic flow tube means containing said formed material flow path core from said wrapper mold;
- and
- removing said formed material flow path core from said molded plastic flow tube means by dissolving said molded formed material flow path core with a solvent.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.