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 Group I (Claims 1-9), in the reply filed on April 13, 2026, is acknowledged.
Claims 10 – 20 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected inventions, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on April 13, 2026.
Applicant is reminded that upon the cancelation of claims to a non-elected invention, the inventorship must be corrected in compliance with 37 CFR 1.48(a) if one or more of the currently named inventors is no longer an inventor of at least one claim remaining in the application. A request to correct inventorship under 37 CFR 1.48(a) must be accompanied by an application data sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76 that identifies each inventor by his or her legal name and by the processing fee required under 37 CFR 1.17(i).
Response to Amendment
Claims 1 – 20 remain. Claims 10 – 20 are withdrawn. Claims 1 – 9 are pending and under examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on October 01, 2024, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1 – 5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over DE-102019003450-A1, to VÖLKLE et al. (“Völkle”), in view of US 2011/0088538 A1, to Bechtold.
Regarding claim 1, Völkle teaches a method for filament processing (lines 160-179, 188-205), comprising: determining a filament cross-section based on an input three-dimensional (3D) design (e.g., lines 192-194 “a stiffness profile can be generated by a predefined (e.g. calculated by simulation) filing structure of the filaments on the raw component (e.g. standard sandwich). This stiffness can be generated continuously increasing or decreasing. Furthermore, the stiffness can be generated in step steps. Ultimately, load path-oriented filing structures are possible.”).
Völkle does not disclose, assembling a sequence of rollers in a configuration to reshape an input filament from an original cross-section to the determined filament cross-section; and processing the input filament in the sequence of rollers to form an output filament with the determined filament cross-section.
Völkle (lines 198-203), however, discloses that “the filament is deposited in a desired form in cross-section to its direction of extension. The deposited filament thus points across a specific geometric cross-sectional shape or profile shape or a desired profile in its direction of extension. Common forms known from mechanics are conceivable here, such as, for example, T, double T, H, U, triangular shape, etc. This results in particular in a reinforcement profile. The storage shape is in particular formed either by a single filament shaped as desired in cross section.”
(lines 174-179) discloses that “The filament is provided in a heated state by either heating an already existing filament [hence, a filament which has already been shaped in a desired form in cross-section], or keeping an already heated filament heated (e.g. heated by its manufacture) or by providing the filament heated as part of its manufacture.”
(lines 219-223) discloses that “the filament is manufactured at the moment or immediately before heating or depositing. In particular, a heating necessary for production is used for heating the filament in the context of the proposed method. In particular, heating takes place as part of the pultrusion and/or extrusion process. In particular, components for pultrusion and/or extrusion or an extruder are carried on the above-mentioned guide device. In particular, an above-mentioned Nozzle included.” – Hence, the input filament is processed to form an output filament with the determined filament cross-section.
Like Völkle, Bechtold teaches a method and device for the production of a fibre-reinforced plastics material profiled part (which “can be applied to fibre-reinforced plastics material profiled parts with any profile shapes,” e.g., I-shaped and T-shaped profiles) [0001-0002],
the method supplies the fibres (analogous to Völkle’s yarn 14) in the form of a tubular braid in which a polymer matrix is arranged by being distributed therein, a longitudinal portion of the supplied fibre braid is enclosed and heated in a heatable moulding press, softening the polymer matrix and filling the gaps between the fibres due to the moulding pressure built up by the moulding press [0007],
[0034-0038] “fibre braids 104, 104', which have been braided by the first braiding means 112 and the second braiding means 112' during operation of the device, run together to a system of reshaping rollers 118 which initially flatten each of the fibre braids 104, 104' and then continuously reshape the two fibre braids 104, 104' into a jointly formed I-profile shape 200 which corresponds to the intended profile 200 (intended shape 200, FIG. 1) of a plastics material profiled part 102 to be produced.” – Analogous to the claimed “assembling a sequence of rollers in a configuration to reshape an input filament from an original cross-section to the determined filament cross-section; and processing the input filament in the sequence of rollers to form an output filament with the determined filament cross-section.”
Therefore, it would have been prima facie obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified, in the same way, the method for filament processing of Völkle by assembling a sequence of rollers in a configuration (e.g., Bechtold’s reshaping rollers 118), for the intended use of e.g., to reshape an input filament from an original cross-section to the determined filament cross-section (e.g., T-shape and/or I-shape, etc.), as suggested by the prior art of Bechtold, and processing the input filament in the sequence of rollers (118) to form an output filament with the determined filament cross-section (e.g., Bechtold’s intended shape 200), since Völkle discloses that the filament is deposited in a desired form in cross-section and that the filament could be provided in a heated state by either heating an already existing filament (hence, already shaped; Völkle lines 174-179), and/or manufactured at the moment or immediately before heating or depositing (Völkle lines 198-203, lines 219-223), since it have held to be within the ordinary skill of worker in the art to select a known material on the basis of its suitability for the intended use. See MPEP § 2144.07
Sinclair & Carroll Co. v. Interchemical Corp., 325 U.S. 327, 65 USPQ 297 (1945) The selection of a known material based on its suitability for its intended use supports a prima facie obviousness determination.
Regarding claim 2, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising applying the output filament to a 3D print to create a structure that incorporates the determined filament cross-section (e.g., see Völkle FIG. 1).
Regarding claim 3, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 2, wherein applying the output filament includes heating the output filament to a temperature that enables adherence to a previous layer, while preserving the cross-section of the filament (e.g., see Völkle lines 174-179).
Regarding claim 4, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 2, wherein applying the output filament uses a print head that has an aperture that matches a shape of the determined filament cross-section (e.g., see Völkle lines 206-223, and FIG. 1).
Regarding claim 5, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 1, wherein determining the filament cross-section includes comparing parts of the 3D design to a database of historical filament examples (e.g., see Völkle lines 292-302).
Claim(s) 6, 8 – 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over DE-102019003450-A1, to VÖLKLE et al. (“Völkle”), in view of US 2011/0088538 A1, to Bechtold, as applied to claim 5 above, and further in view of US 2021/0357555 A1, to LIU et al. (“Liu”).
Regarding claim 6, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 5, except for, wherein determining the filament cross-section includes extracting features from the 3D design using a convolutional neural network and comparing a resulting feature vector to clusters of 3D designs in the database.
Liu teaches a method for design optimization and/or performance prediction of a material system, “the method includes generating a representation of the material system at a number of scales, wherein the representation at a scale comprises microstructure volume elements (MVE) that are building blocks of the material system at said scale; collecting data of response fields of the MVE computed from a material model of the material system over a predefined set of material properties and boundary conditions; applying machine learning to the collected data of response fields to generate clusters that minimize a distance between points in a nominal response space within each cluster; computing an interaction tensor of interactions of each cluster with each of the other clusters; manipulating the governing partial differential equation (PDE) using Green's function to form a generalized Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation; and solving the integral equation using the generated clusters and the computed interactions to result in a response prediction that is usable for the design optimization and/or performance prediction of the material system.” [0010];
[0990] “Challenges to building a closely packed woven RVE model include structure generation and mesoscopic yarn properties characterization,” … “One approach is to directly use CAD software to design and output the RVE structure,” … “To generalize design process and accommodate for more composite structures, geometrical modeling software packages such as TexGen and WiseTex are developed. These packages store large libraries for different composite patterns and can generate the corresponding RVE structure given the geometrical features such as RVE length, yarn width, yarn height, and so on. However, the automatically generated structures usually have a fixed shape of the yarn cross-sections and yarn centerlines. These simplifications are suiTable 9—for loose woven materials but result in yarn-to-yarn penetration in close-packed composites. In this case, fine-tuning the geometry by modifying the position, dimension, or utilizing non-symmetrical shapes of the local yarn cross-section is essential. These procedures, however, involve complicated geometry manipulation and are time-consuming. For capturing more accurate and detailed structures in RVE, researchers have recently employed X-ray micro-tomography to directly obtain the geometry of the composites. This is a promising technique but is quite expensive and requires careful image processing. As an alternative, to achieve a fine balance between speed and accuracy in generating the RVE structure, we developed a novel 2-step geometrical modeling method in the invention with a one-time post-processing step to modify the local yarn geometry generated by TexGen.”
[0351] Liu discloses that these are applicable to “Process-structure-property-performance for different processes (Additive Manufacturing (AM), composite, polymer matrix composite (PMC)), leading to system design including experiments to predictions can be found in EXAMPLE 6.” See also [0608].
[0052 – 0054] discloses a method of applying the material system database for design optimization and/or performance prediction of a material system, the method includes training a neural network with data of the material system database; and predicting real-time responses during a loading process performed using the trained neueral network, wherein the real-time responses are used for the design optimization and/or performance prediction of a material system,” … “the method further includes performing a topology optimization to design a structure with microstructure information,” … “the neural network comprises a feed forward neural network (FFNN) and/or a convolutional neural network (CNN).”
[0071] “The FE model and woven MVE responses are computed in a concurrent fashion, establishing a concurrent modeling scheme. A combined hierarchical and concurrent modeling is thus implemented.”
[0072] “Given a priori information on maximum service loads, the database will provide all possible woven microstructure (e.g., yarn geometry and yarn angle) and material constituents (e.g., matrix properties and yarn properties) that would prevent yielding to occur.”
Therefore, it would have been prima facie obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modify the method of Völkle/Bechtold so that determining the filament cross-section includes extracting features from the 3D design (e.g., Liu [0990] “use CAD software to design and output the RVE structure,” “geometrical modeling software packages such as TexGen and WiseTex,” … “store large libraries for different composite patterns and can generate the corresponding RVE structure given the geometrical features”) using a convolutional neural network, as suggested by the prior art (e.g., see [0052-0054] “training a neural network with data of the material system database,” … “performing a topology optimization to design a structure with microstructure information,” … “the neural network comprises a feed forward neural network (FFNN) and/or a convolutional neural network (CNN)”), and comparing a resulting feature vector to clusters of 3D designs in the database (e.g., Lui [0010] “applying machine learning to the collected data of response fields to generate clusters that minimize a distance between points in a nominal response space within each cluster; computing an interaction tensor of interactions of each cluster with each of the other clusters”; see [0071-0072]), for the purpose of, as suggested by the prior art of Liu, using the generated clusters and the computed interactions to result in a response prediction that is usable for the design optimization and/or performance prediction of the material system, as taught by Liu [0010]. See MPEP 2143 (I)(Rationale G).
Regarding claim 8, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising checking the determined filament cross-section using one or more rules or constraints to ensure manufacturability before assembling the sequence of rollers (e.g., Liu discloses [0010] “collecting data of response fields of the MVE computed from a material model of the material system over a predefined set of material properties and boundary conditions”; [1221] “Different process parameter combinations are tested in this benchmark validation in order to ensure that the models can work at various production conditions.”; see Liu [0417, 0428].
Regarding claim 9, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 1, except for, further comprising monitoring the output filament and modifying the processing to correct defects in the output filament as compared to the determined filament cross-section.
Liu, however, discloses [0594] “in-situ monitoring techniques can be combined with the existing modeling capability to further validate microstructure failure process of the UD,” and [0010] “applying machine learning to the collected data of response fields to generate clusters that minimize a distance between points in a nominal response space within each cluster; computing an interaction tensor of interactions of each cluster with each of the other clusters; manipulating the governing partial differential equation (PDE) using Green's function to form a generalized Lippmann-Schwinger integral equation; and solving the integral equation using the generated clusters and the computed interactions to result in a response prediction that is usable for the design optimization and/or performance prediction of the material system.”).
Therefore, it would have been prima facie obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modify the method of Völkle/Bechtold to comprise, as suggested by the prior art, in-situ monitoring the output filament and modifying the processing to correct defects in the output filament as compared to the determined filament cross-section (e.g., Liu discloses design optimization and/or performance prediction of the material system), for the purpose of, as suggested by Liu, e.g., validate microstructure failure process of the output fiber reinforced filament, since Liu teaches that “in-situ monitoring techniques can be combined with the existing modeling capability to further validate microstructure failure process of the UD”. See MPEP 2143 (I) (Rationale G).
Claim(s) 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over DE-102019003450-A1, to VÖLKLE et al. (“Völkle”), in view of US 2011/0088538 A1, to Bechtold, as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of US 2015/0201500 A1, to SHINAR et al. (“Shinar”).
Regarding claim 7, Völkle/Bechtold teaches the method of claim 1, except for disclosing, further comprising applying laser machining to further reshape the input filament.
Shinar teaches a device, system, and method of three-dimensional printing (abstract, [0219]), which combines three-dimensional printing processes with other processes such as modification, subtraction (e.g., laser machining) and/or addition processes. See Shinar [0258] “In some embodiments, the DLW may comprise modification, subtraction and/or addition processes to create patterns or structures of material(s) directly on substrate(s), without lithography or masks. The interaction of the laser with the substrate (or other surface) may trigger material modification (e.g., sintering or melting) or material removal (e.g., ablation); or may enable laser micro-machining which allows generation of trenches or pockets where components may be embedded inside the substrate.”
Therefore, it would have been prima facie obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modify the method of Völkle/Bechtold to further comprise applying laser machining to further reshape the input filament, as suggested by the prior art, with good expectation of success e.g., for the purpose of, as suggested by the prior art of Shinar, applying laser machining to trigger material modification (e.g., sintering or melting) or material removal (e.g., ablation); or may enable laser micro-machining which allows generation of trenches or pockets where components may be embedded inside the substrate,” as taught by Shinar [0258]. See MPEP 2143 (I) (Rationale G).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 2018/0202080 A1 (Kozar et al.); Discloses multi-part filaments for additive manufacturing, [0034] The sufficiency of rigidity of the multi-part filament 10, such that it may be dispensed in a self-supporting length, may be a function of one or more of (i) the size of the multi-part filament, (ii) the cross-sectional shape of the multi-part filament 10, (iii) the largest dimension of a perpendicular cross-section of the multi-part filament 10, (iv) the smallest dimension of a perpendicular cross-section of the multi-part filament 10,”… See FIGs. 8 – 20.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to EDGAREDMANUEL TROCHE whose telephone number is (571)272-9766. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-5:30.
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/EDGAREDMANUEL TROCHE/Examiner, Art Unit 1744
/JEFFREY M WOLLSCHLAGER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 1742
