Patent ID: 7603933

Claim:
A method of chopping one or more items selected from the group consisting of fiber, filament, strand, string, wire, strip and ribbon into short segments using a chopper, comprising placing the item(s) in contact with a guide roll located upstream of a chopper, or portion of a chopper, comprising a blade roll, a working layer and an idler roll having a peripheral surface that forms a nip with the one or more items and a surface of the working layer, feeding the item(s) into the chopper while oscillating the guide roll back and forth along its axis with an oscillating assembly to move cause the item(s) to be placed in differing locations on the surface of said working layer with respect to an edge of said working layer, the improvement comprising using, as part of the oscillating assembly an electric servo motor for providing rotational motion and using a programmable controller to control magnitude and direction of the rotational motion of said servo motor to cause the guide roll to oscillate back and forth and programming the controller to cause the servo motor to stop and pause when the guide roll is at reversing points for at least 5 seconds before reversing the direction of the rotational motion and direction of oscillation of the guide roll.