DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of claims 1-3 in the reply filed on 3/23/2026 is acknowledged.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
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 1-3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lu (CN111390367A) in view of Saito (US12296401B2) with citations made to attached machine translations.
Regarding claim 1, Lu teaches a spatter detection method for detecting an occurrence of spatter at the time of joining a workpiece ([0004] workpiece),
which is a multilayer body (Fig. 1) of a plurality of plates ([0004] two plates),
using a welding apparatus including a pair of electrodes ([0004] two electrodes),
and a voltage sensor configured to detect a voltage in the welding power circuit ([0018] voltage sensor),
the spatter detection method comprising:
a step of acquiring voltage detection values detected by the voltage sensor in the peak holding section for each of the cycles ([0044] collects the current and voltage during the welding process, understood to be able to detect voltage during peak holding section) ; and
a step of determining whether or not the spatter occurs ([0044] identify whether spatter occurs at the weld joint) ,
based on a difference value between the voltage detection values in the peak holding section for an N-th cycle (N being an integer equal to or greater than 2) ([0103] point 17, spatter has occured, Fig. 9 taken to occur after point Fig. 7) and the voltage detection values in the peak holding section for an M-th cycle (M being an integer smaller than N) ([0102] point 12, no splashing, taken to be a cycle before Fig. 9).
Lu is silent on a welding power circuit connected to the pair of electrodes, and a spot welding method using the welding apparatus includes supplying a pulse-shaped welding current to the workpiece, the pulse-shaped welding current being generated when the welding power circuit alternately repeats power distribution control and a power distribution pause over a plurality of cycles while the workpiece is sandwiched and pressurized by the pair of electrodes, and maintaining, under the power distribution control, the welding current within a set peak current range in a peak holding section.
Saito teaches a welding power circuit (3) connected to the pair of electrodes (21, 26), a spot welding method using the welding apparatus includes supplying a pulse-shaped welding current to the workpiece (Col.. 6 lines 15-30 applies the pulse-shaped welding current to between the upper electrode chip 21 and the lower electrode chip 26),
the pulse-shaped welding current being generated when the welding power circuit (3) alternately repeats power distribution control (Col. 6 lines 40-60 current control processing, the control apparatus 33 maintains the peak state for a predetermined time after having increased the welding current from the bottom current to the peak current range) and a power distribution pause (Col. 7 lines 1-20 effective value control processing, the control apparatus 33 puts execution of the current control processing on hold across a standby time) over a plurality of cycles (Fig. 6) while the workpiece (W) is sandwiched and pressurized by the pair of electrodes (21, 26),
and maintaining, under the power distribution control (Col. 6 lines 40-67 current control processing), the welding current within a set peak current range (Col. 6 lines 40-67 peak current range) in a peak holding section (Col. 6 lines 40-67 peak holding time).
Lu and Saito are considered to be analogous to the claimed invention because they are in the same field of spatter detection methods. It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, to have modified Lu to incorporate the teachings of Saito, to have the spot welding method that uses a welding power circuit, a pulse-shaped welding current, that alternately repeats a power distribution control and pause, which has a welding current held in a peak range during a holding section so that current may be controlled, including the timing of the applied current, so that the occurrence of spatter may be reduced while energy for forming a proper sized welding nugget within the workpiece may be formed, allowing the workpiece to be reliably joined (Saito Col. 2 lines 20-45).
Regarding claim 2, Lu and Saito teach the spatter detection method according to claim 1, and Lu teaches wherein the M-th cycle(Fig. 7, [0102]) is a cycle immediately before the N-th cycle (Fig. 9 [0103], it is understood that the cycles are measured sequentially as in [0022-0025], where the time at Fig. 9 is compared to points immediately before).
Regarding claim 3, Lu and Saito teach the spatter detection method according to claim 2, and Lu teaches further comprising a step of calculating an average value ([0071] arithmetic mean/average value μ) of the voltage detection values in the peak holding section for each of the cycles ([0085, 0094] normalized voltage, understood to be an averaging calculation), wherein
it is determined that the spatter occurs when an average difference value is larger than a predetermined first threshold value ([0071, 0074] compare the average value to the threshold 1, where the average value is determined from the standard deviation),
the average difference value being obtained by subtracting the average value for the N-th cycle from the average value for the M-th cycle ([0075-0079] standard deviation calculated, at sequential time windows, taken to be the subsequent cycles, where standard deviation is understood to include subtraction).
Conclusion
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/ABIGAIL H RHUE/Examiner, Art Unit 3761 5/11/2026
/WOODY A LEE JR/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3761
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