The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jun. 30, 1992
Filed:
Jul. 02, 1990
Eugene A Swain, Webster, NY (US);
Stephen R Carter, Tucson, AZ (US);
Stuart A Hoenig, Tucson, AZ (US);
Xerox Corporation, Stamford, CT (US);
Abstract
A cleaning process involving expanding carbon dioxide from an orifice into a thermally insulated chamber to form small carbon dioxide particles, retaining the small carbon dioxide particles in the insulating chamber until the small carbon dioxide particles agglomerate into large snowflakes, entraining the large snowflakes in a high velocity vortex of inert gas to accelerate the large snowflakes and directing a stream of the inert gas and accelerated large snowflakes against the surface of a substrate to be cleaned. This process may be carried out with apparatus including means to direct a stream of small carbon dioxide snow particles into an expansion chamber, means to agglomerate the small carbon dioxide particles into large carbon dioxide snowflakes in the expansion chamber, and means to accelerate the large snowflakes with a high velocity inert gas stream.