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 .
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.
Claim(s) 1, 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 16 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Smith USP 4263706 in view of Deng et al. CN 108163731 (incl. machine translation).
Claims 1 and 11, Smith discloses dragline 10 (Fig. 1), comprising: a base (tub 16); a frame (circular deck 14) disposed above the base; a power system including a driveshaft 58 (Fig. 3) to facilitate a swinging movement of the frame with respect to the base (“[o]ne or more drive motors (not shown) are mounted on the deck 14 and have downwardly extending drive shafts 58 extending through the floor of the deck 14”); a bearing assembly for the driveshaft, the bearing assembly including: a housing 14a (see annotated Fig. 3) fixedly engageable with the frame and defining a cavity to provide rotatable passage to the driveshaft therethrough; a spherical bearing (bearings 59) engageable with each of the housing and the driveshaft for journaling the driveshaft in the cavity and facilitating a rotation of the driveshaft about a longitudinal axis and an angulation of the driveshaft with respect to a reference axis.
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Smith does not expressly disclose a thrust bearing configured to be supported against each of the driveshaft and the housing to accommodate the angulation of the driveshaft and an axial load passing along the longitudinal axis away from the spherical bearing onto either of the housing or the frame.
Deng discloses a fixed column crane comprising a bearing arrangement for supporting a drive shaft (first upper seat 4)([0031], l. 4) with the cavity of a housing (lower seat 1)([0031], l. 3), wherein the bearing arrangement includes a self-aligning spherical bearing 3 ([0031], l. 4) configured to support radial loads while accommodated misalignment or angulation of the driveshaft 4, and a self-aligning thrust bearing 2 ([0031], ll. 3 – 4) configured to support axial (thrust) loads while accommodating misalignment or angulation of the driveshaft 4. In said arrangement, Deng teaches that decoupling radial and axial load support using the respective self alignment bearings improves load distribution, operational reliability and service life in heavy machinery having large rotating shafts. ([0020], ll. 6 – 14: “the radial load (horizontal force) of the support device is entirely borne by the self-aligning roller bearing, and the axial load (vertical force) of the support device is mostly borne by the thrust self-aligning roller bearing, with a small portion borne by the self-aligning roller bearing. Since the axial load of the support device is proportional to the weight of the rotating part above the lower panel of the outer rotating column, and the radial load of the support device is proportional to the overturning moment, the support device of the embodiments of the present invention can be applied to fixed column cranes with light weight and large overturning moment, and will not cause the inner and outer rings of the thrust self-aligning roller bearing to separate”).
Both Smith and Deng address analogous problems associated with supporting large drive shafts in heavy machinery, including cranes and draglines, which are subject to significant radial, and axial loads and shaft misalignment during operation. Accordingly, one of ordinary skill in the art would reasonably look to the bearing arrangement of Deng to improve the bearing support system of Smith.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the self aligning roller bearing assembly of Smith to further include a thrust self-aligning roller bearing as taught by Deng, since such a modification would of have been motivated by the desire to separately support radial and axial loads acting on the drive shaft and maintain shaft alignment under heavy loading and structural deflection.
Claims 2 and 12, Smith as modified by Deng discloses the thrust bearing being located at an elevation with respect to the spherical bearing along the longitudinal axis (construed as relative positioning, wherein the thrust bearing is positioned at a different elevation than the spherical bearing along the longitudinal axis).
Claims 6 and 16, Smith discloses the cavity defining a cavity axis, and the driveshaft is configured to pass through the cavity such that the longitudinal axis aligns with the cavity axis.
Claims 9 and 19, Smith as modified by Deng discloses the spherical bearing is a spherical roller bearing defining a first spherical center; and the thrust bearing is a thrust spherical roller bearing defining a second spherical center ([0031], ll. 17 – 18: “[r]eferring to Figure 1, the center of the raceway surface of the thrust self-aligning roller bearing 2 coincides with the center of the raceway surface of the self-aligning roller bearing 3”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 – 5, 7, 8, 10, 13 – 15, 17, 18 and 20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHILLIP A JOHNSON whose telephone number is (571)270-5216. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9am - 5pm.
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/PHILLIP A JOHNSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3617