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:
Oct. 19, 1999
Filed:
Sep. 18, 1997
John R Ford, Xenia, OH (US);
Centek Industries, Inc., , US;
Abstract
A wet marine exhaust muffler includes a metallic housing and a polymeric jacket substantially encapsulating the metallic housing. The metallic housing defines one or more chambers in the interior of the housing. An inlet pipe and an outlet pipe each extend through openings in the polymeric jacket and communicate with at least one chamber in the interior of the housing. The metallic housing is preferably formed from stainless steel and the polymeric jacket is preferably formed from a thermoplastic material having a thickness of approximately 0.001 inch to 0.1 inch, and more preferably of approximately 0.005 inch to 0.060 inch. According to one preferred method for inhibiting the explosion of a wet marine exhaust muffler, the muffler housing (but not the inlet and outlet pipes) is at least partially surrounded by a heat shrinkable thermoplastic tubing and the heat shrinkable thermoplastic tubing is heated by conventional means to shrink the heat shrinkable thermoplastic tubing over the muffler housing to form the thermoplastic jacket. It is one object of the invention to provide a wet marine exhaust muffler, and a method for manufacturing such a muffler, effective to prevent or minimize explosion damage without substantially increasing the manufacturing cost or compromising other desirable muffler characteristics.