Patent ID: 8770250

Claim:
An apparatus for joining together thermoformable sheets, comprising: a frame; a nip roller assembly carried by the frame and having a pair of counter-rotating nip rollers and a drive motor configured to drive at least one of the nip rollers in forward and reverse rotation to move at least one of a new sheet and an old sheet along a sheet travel path; an entrance sheet clamp assembly supported by the frame downstream of the nip roller assembly and having a pair of opposed entrance sheet clamping members supported by the frame each provided on opposite sides of the sheet travel path for translation of at least one relative to another between an extended position and a retracted position generally perpendicular to the sheet travel path, both entrance sheet clamping members having a vacuum surface, wherein one of the entrance sheet clamping members is further supported by the frame for lateral retraction and extension substantially parallel to the sheet travel path; an exit sheet clamp assembly supported by the frame downstream of the entrance vacuum clamp bar assembly and having a pair of opposed exit sheet clamping members supported by the frame each on opposite sides of the sheet travel path for translation of at least one relative to another between an extended position and a retracted position generally perpendicular to a sheet travel path, both exit sheet clamping members having a vacuum surface, wherein one of the exit sheet clamping members is further supported by the frame for lateral retraction and extension substantially parallel to the sheet travel path, the one exit sheet clamping member provided on an opposite side of the sheet travel path from the one entrance sheet clamping member; a sheet severing mechanism for severing an overlapped old sheet and a new sheet provided along the sheet travel path; and at least one actuator carried by the frame and configured to move the one exit sheet clamping member and the one entrance sheet clamping member toward and away from a splice location on the sheet travel path to retract scrap sheet away from the splice location between the entrance sheet clamp assembly and the exit sheet clamp assembly.