Patent ID: 9631303
Date: 2017-04-25
CPC Classifications: D04C,D10B

Claim:
1. A mechanism for braiding, comprising: a disc defining a plane and a circumferential edge; a mandrel extending from the center of the disc and generally perpendicular to the plane of the disc, the mandrel adapted to hold a plurality of filaments extending radially from the mandrel toward the circumferential edge of the disc; a plurality of catch mechanisms positioned circumferentially around the edge of the disc, each catch mechanism extending toward the circumferential edge of the disc, wherein each catch mechanism is adapted to engage a filament; a plurality of actuators adapted to pull the plurality of catch mechanisms in a generally radial direction away from the circumferential edge of the disc; and a computer program embodied in a non-transitory computer readable medium, that when executing on one of more computers provides instructions to engage a subset of the plurality of filaments and to move the disc and the plurality of catch mechanisms relative to one another in discrete steps.