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:
Dec. 03, 2002
Filed:
Apr. 16, 2001
Richard O. Rhodes, San Francisco, CA (US);
Fafco Incorporated, Chico, CA (US);
Abstract
Improved plastic heat exchanger production systems are described. The production systems are arranged to extrude plastic tubing, cut the tubing into segments of desired length and convey the tubing to a plurality of aligned tube inserters. Clip strips are feed through the tube inserters which sequentially automatically insert tube segments into the clip strips. The clip strips are then cut at desired lengths to provide tubing panels of a desired size or sizes. In a preferred system, header pipes are attached to the respective ends of the cut tubing panels to provide completed heat exchanger panels. When desired, heat exchangers having laterally offset tubes may be created by cutting one or more middle clip strips into spacer segments and rotating the spacer segments to laterally offset at least some of the tubes. In another aspect of the invention, improved tube inserters suitable for inserting plastic tubing into a plastic clip strip are described.