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US 7,003,999 B2Granted
Deformation on thin walled bodies
AssigneeEnvases (UK) Limited
InventorsSantiago Garcia Campo, Juan Saiz Goiria
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A thin walled body such as a container (1) is gripped at a holding station and tooling (10) is engaged to deform the wall of the body at a predetermined zone. The predetermined wall zone is co-aligned with the tooling (10) by means of coordinated movement of the tooling (10) (typically by means of rotation about a tooling axis) prior to engagement with the wall zone.
Claims33
A method of deforming a thin walled body, the method comprising:
- a) providing an apparatus including
- i) a holding station for holding the body gripped securely,
- ii) a tooling station including tooling to deform the body at a predetermined wall zone on a wall of the body, and
- iii) means for co-ordinated movement of the tooling to reconfigure the tooling to co-align with the predetermined wall;
- b) holding the body gripped securely at the holding station;
- c) engaging the tooling to deform the wall of the body at the predetermined wall zone, the tooling being provided at the tooling station which is adjacent the holding station during deformation;
- and
- d) operating the means for co-ordinated movement of the tooling such that the predetermined wall zone is co-aligned with the tooling prior to deformation, wherein the position of one or more pre-positioned marks on a surface of the body is compared with a datum situation and the tooling is reoriented with an appropriate adjustment made to the tooling to conform to the datum situation.
5 more elements
Apparatus for deforming a thin walled body, the apparatus including:
- a) a holding station for holding the body gripped securely;
- b) a tooling station including tooling to deform the body at a predetermined wall zone on a wall of the body, the tooling station being positioned at a location adjacent the holding station during deformation;
- and
- c) means for co-ordinated movement to reconfigure the tooling to co-align with the predetermined wall zone prior to deformation;
- and
- d) determination means for determining the orientation of the body relative to a reference situation, wherein the determination means includes means for comparing the position of one or more predisposed marks with a datum reference situation and an appropriate adjustment is made to the orientation of the tooling to conform to the datum situation.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.