Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-5 and 7-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Garcia et al. (WO 2020/023044 A1, hereinafter Garcia) in view of Krichtman (US 2010/0121476 A1, hereinafter Krichtman).
Note that while “target layer thickness” in the claims had “target” amended to replace “intended” to remove any ambiguity as to what “intended” might mean, for the purposes of providing antecedent basis in the specification, the specification’s recitations of “intended layer thickness” provide antecedent support for “target layer thickness.”
Regarding Claims 1-5 and 7-18, Garcia teaches a layer-by-layer powder (per [0007]) 3D printing method/controller using a fusing agent applied before the heating step that fuses with the fusing agent (per [0008]) to define cross-sections of the object to be printed by melting (per [0016-[0017]), wherein the fusing agent can be interpreted as either an absorption modifier or radiation absorber, since a radiation absorber clearly functions as an absorption modifier by modifying how powder absorbs radiation, with the printing process including incorporation of a blank layer (per [0021]) that are implicitly preheated in some way, shape, or, form to the temperature that allows for [0021]’s disclosure of controlling the quickest heating, and with object layers also being implicitly preheated before application of the fusing agent.
However, while Garcia is silent on a bed lowering/layer distance determination regime including a non-linear decrease pattern as applicable based on resolution as claimed (which includes taking into per-layer data defining the cross-section of the object, since each layer is being evaluated for resolution concerns relating the object being made), Krichtman in analogous art pertaining to 3D printing teaches compensating for shrinkage in [0112]-[0114], [0139]-[0157], and [0175]-[0178] by using non-linear layer distances with resolution adjustments as necessary
Therefore it would have been obvious to incorporate such a bed-lowering lowering per Krichtman in Garcia to ensure Garcia can compensate for shrinkage and achieve proper resolution, with the understanding that in a blank layer that has no resolution concerns, the lowering of the bed would be by the target thickness -- and when resolution is a concern, the non-linear aspect would be incorporated thus allowing for actual layer thickness deviating from the target layer thickness based on the resolution in distance by which the build be is configured to be lowered, and with that non-linear relationship would generate a result in which the layer distances for lower layers of the object are larger than layer distances for upper layers of the object.
Specifically regarding Claims 9-10, the previous combination remains as applied above, and while silent on how to translate the resolution control settings to powder bed fusion setup (and thus does not explicitly contemplate using a test object or model in the applied combination), the teaching of resolution control is general enough to motivate a person having ordinary skill in the art to apply it to a powder bed process as applied above. Doing so would require routine optimization to make any adjustments necessary for powder layers, and given the knowledge level of a person of ordinary skill in the art, the application of such routine optimization would require some testing, and such testing could be carried in a limited number of finite and predictable ways including empirical determination from one or more test objects and/or a model based on one or build parameters, as nearly any, and possibly all, routine testing possibilities would fall into of those two broadly-characterized buckets, thus rendering both techniques obvious to try.
Specifically regarding Claims 14-15, there is no claimed requirement of incorporating a property of the particulate material, such as its density, into a specific calculation of the layer distance for each layer. Thus, the claim limitation that specifies that the layer distance is merely based on a property, such as density, of the particulate material, is actually quite broad such that the combination as applied above reads thereon. Namely, while taking into account like density is thus not explicitly contemplated, a particularly dense or a particularly fluffy powder would present differing needs for layer distances, and thus setting particular layer distances is implicitly based on the property of density of a particulate material.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to Claims 1-5 and 7-18 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RYAN M OCHYLSKI whose telephone number is (571)270-7009. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9-6.
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/RYAN M OCHYLSKI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1743