US Government As Represented by the Secretary of the Army

Other

Actus, Inc.

Peter Durenec

Aubrey J Dunn

Steven L Holt

Clifford E Lowe

A night sight assembly in conjunction with a day sight which is easily cocted and disconnected in total darkness to small defense weapons systems. The assembly is comprised of an infrared viewer amounted on a cradle which is easily connected and disconnected to a small weapon system.

Detachably connectable sight assembly for a small defense weapon

A fluidic bearing seal assembly comprised of a plurality of floating back ring seals positioned in a plurality of annular grooves in a piston with at least one free-floating sealing wedge fitted to the outer peripheral edge of each backing ring for sliding along the cylinder wall. The piston has an inlet port and one way check valve means in the head thereof through which the working fluid is compressed during the compression stroke into a plurality of passageways that route the working fluid under pressure against said plurality of floating backing ring seals and into a pressure reservoir directly in contact with the cylinder wall and between adjacent backing ring seals to press the backing ring seals and seal wedges against the cylinder wall during the compression stroke and release the pressure from the ring seals and wedges during the return stroke of the piston.

Fluidic self adjusting seal assembly

A generally semicircular device is disclosed which is capable of holding an djusting knob or wheel stationary with respect to a flange. The device is in the form of a hollow arch with flat parallel walls joined by a curved wall. A cam lever is pivoted in an opening in one of the flat walls such that the cam bears against the knob for one position of the lever and pushes the knob and flange towards each other.

Adjusting plate retainer

A boresight collimator usable with three different night-vision (infrared) ights for the U.S. Army TOW missile. These sights must be boresighted to the visible light (day) sight already on the missile launcher, but each night sight is differently mounted. The collimator has a readily adjustable bracket for attaching to the night sights and for allowing both the visible and infrared collimating images to be seen in their respective sights.

Boresight collimator

A free piston displacer control means based on an offset axis mass attached o a crankshaft flywheel in which the rotating crankshaft reciprocates the piston displacer by driving the piston during the momentum of the stroke and by static braking at the end of each stroke at the period of maximum pressure exchange across the cooler frictional seal.

Free piston displacer control means

In order to use a common module cryogenic cooler with two different types thermal nights, an adapter plate is required for mounting the cooler to the sights. The plate has its two opposite sides differently machined to fit against the walls of corresponding sights, and has a central opening for a cooler mounting flange. For one sight, one side of the adapter is screwed to the sight wall and the cooler flange is inserted in the central opening. For the other sight, the other side of the adapter is inserted into a recess in the sight wall, and is retained by a retainer plate screwed to the wall. The cooler flange is inserted into the adapter plate central opening through a hole in the retainer plate.

Cryogenic cooler adapter plate

A pneumatic space and an expansion space are provided in a cooling head hng a double-ended piston. A fluid line from the cooler compressor feeds directly into the expansion space, and, via a fluid delay, into the pressure space. In response to the fluid pressure waves in the lines, the piston is first moved in one direction by fluid in the expansion space and in the opposite direction by fluid in the pneumatic space.

Split-cycle cooler with improved pneumatically-driven cooling head

A yoke with an elliptical slot in it is driven by a reciprocating motion in guide by a circular cam carried off-center to a rotating shaft. The minor axis of the ellipse is equal to the cam diameter and is parallel to the direction of reciprocating motion. The major axis is equal to the cam diameter plus twice the off-center distance of the cam. The yoke may be attached to a piston in a compressor by a connecting rod, or may be formed as a portion of the piston.

Rotary to recipricating motion translator

Spring loaded seals comprised of two resting rings positioned in an annular groove of a piston that are pressed against the upper and lower shoulders of the groove by a corrugated spring fitted therebetween. Each resting ring has at least one free-floating sealing wedge, preferably made of ceramic material, which overlaps the outer peripheral edge thereof for sliding along the cylinder wall wherein the sealing wedges frictionally press against the cylinder wall during the stroke of the piston in one direction and release to more freely slide along the cylinder wall in the other direction. The resting rings and sealing wedges form dry seals, i.e. unlubricated sliding seals, for use in compressor devices which operate at either high or low temperatures.

Spring loaded piston seal assembly

A dual pneumatic volume means in the ambient end of a free displacer cyroic cooler to provide strong pneumatic braking and dwell times of the displacer movement at both the top dead center and bottom dead center of the displacer waveform. A second pneumatic piston is positioned between the end of the cooler housing and extends into the first pneumatic piston attached to the displacer to form a pneumatic spring volume within the first piston to accomplish the strong pneumatic braking.

Dual pneumatic volume for cryogenic cooler

A cold station thermal switch at the end of a cold finger in cooperation h the detector on an inner dewar wherein the thermal switch opens at the cool down cryogenic temperature to prevent vibrations from the cooler system from being transmitted to the detector. The thermal switch has an outer bellows fitted around the end of the last stage of the cooler which extends close to but not in contact with the detector and an inner bellows having a metallic bumper on the end thereof in contact with the detector until cool down to the operating cryogenic temperature at which time contraction of the inner bellows disconnects the metallic bumper from the detector.

Prolonged cold temperature cryogenic cooler

Swash plate driving means for cryogenic coolers wherein multiple compress and regenerators are driven. The swash plate driving means may drive one or more compressors off one or both sides of each swash plate, and one or more regenerators may simultaneously be driven by separate swash plates. The swash plates are formed to provide flat topped and bottomed repetitive pressure waves.

Swash plate driving means for cryogenic coolers

An evacuating-charging valve assembly consisting of a valve permanently mtable onto a fluid system such as an air conditioning system and a connecting head temporarily attachable to the valve. Two embodiments are shown, in both of which the valve has a flange portion for mounting to the fluid system, and a boss portion. Each boss portion is internally bored and threaded and has a ball-ended setscrew, with the ball against the end of a hole through the flange. In one embodiment, the setscrew has slots through its threads, and the connecting head screws into the boss. In the other embodiment, holes are bored through the boss and the connected head screws onto external threads on the boss. Both connecting heads have a setscrew wrench inside, and an external knob for rotating or linearly moving the wrench, and have passageways through them to an external hose connection. When the setscrews are unscrewed, a fluid passageway exists between the hole through the flange and the external hose connection.

Evacuating-charging valve assembly

Two embodiments of a Stirling cooler are shown. Each embodiment includes usual compressor portion and cold finger portion. The compressor is improved by inserting a vibration damper in the master piston rod by employing a unique evacuating-charging valve, and be inserting an in-line filter in the cryogen passageway between compressor and cold finger. The cold finger is improved by lining the inside of the displacer-regenerator piston with a highly reflective coating and by inserting a good heat conducting spring between the end of the piston and the opposite wall of the cold finger expansion chamber. In one embodiment, the drive for the compressor crankshaft is improved by using herringbone reduction gears with the layer gear counterbalanced and by using a torsional drive shaft between the electric drive motor and the small herringbone gear. The other embodiment uses direct torsion-shaft drive of the crankshaft, but with a counterbalance on the crankshaft in the form of a weight on a flexible arm.

Cryogenic refrigerator

A cryogenic cooler having multistage telescoping in-line regenerator-dispers in which the regenerator-displacer stages are progressively smaller from a pressure wave input end to the output cold end. Each stage from the input toward the output functions to produce a plurality of precooled expansion volumes for progressively lowering the temperatures at the input environment of each subsequent regenerator-displacer stage to maintain a temperature of about 8.degree. Kelvin at the output end of the cooler. Cooling concepts in which the multistage telescoping in-line regenerator-displacer may be used are the integral cycle, the split cycle, and dual fluidly control motion cycle.

Growing community of inventors

Annandale, VA, United States of America

Peter Durenec