Tapered structure construction

摘要

Feeding stock used to form a tapered structure into a curving device such that each point on the stock undergoes rotational motion about a peak location of the tapered structure; and the stock meets a predecessor portion of stock along one or more adjacent edges.

主权项

1. A method for forming a frusto-conical structure from planar metallic stock, the frusto-conical structure having a virtual peak located at a point where the taper of the frusto-conical structure would decrease to zero if the structure were not truncated, the method comprising:
feeding the stock used to form the frusto-conical structure into a curving device such that:
a portion of the stock that has not yet been deformed by the curving device undergoes a substantially rotational motion in the plane of the portion of the stock about the peak of the frusto-conical structure such that each point on the portion of the stock that has not yet been deformed maintains a constant distance throughout feeding from the peak; andthe stock meets a predecessor portion of the stock along one or more adjacent edges; and translating the portion of the stock in a direction different from a feed direction of the stock and adjusting an in-feed angle of the portion of stock according to the substantially rotational motion.