PATENT CLAIM ANALYSIS

Application Number: 15957338
Application Type: Utility
Filing Date: 2018-04
Publication Date: 2018-11
Patent Classification: ["425", "375000"]

Abstract:
An apparatus, and corresponding method, feeds build material, in the form of rods, to a drive system in a three-dimensional (3D) printing system. The apparatus dispenses a rod to a media tray and into a first groove defined by a flipper arm. The flipper arm is in a substantially horizontal position supported by a bottom ridge of the media tray. The flipper arm is rotated away from the bottom ridge and toward a stopper coupled to the flipper arm and the media tray. The stopper defines a second groove. The apparatus deposits the rod into the drive system via a feed shaft formed by the first and second grooves of the flipper arm and stopper, respectively. The apparatus enables high-speed 3D printing using the rods by overcoming challenges in loading the rods due to brittleness of the rods.

Claim (Index 1):
A cartridge for dispensing rods within a three-dimensional (3D) printing system, the cartridge comprising:\n a housing configured to store rods stacked horizontally along an interior length of the housing, the housing defining a housing exit to dispense rods; a ramp interior to the housing; and a roller disposed at the housing exit and defining a slot therein along at least a portion of a length of the roller, the roller configured to (i) receive a rod in the slot as the roller rotates within the housing and (ii) dispense the rod from the slot as the slot rotates toward the housing exit, the ramp angled to direct rods toward the roller that, in turn, dispenses the rods via the slot to the housing exit.

Metadata:
- Claim Count in Document: 52.0
- Percentile: 91.0
- Lexical Diversity: 2.30303
- Patent Class: 425.0
- Transitional Phrase Type: open
- Component Type: 1
- Foreign Priority: False
- Related Applications: ['12845859', '14250037', '11753020', '10159729', '15325760']

Analysis Scores:
- 35 USC 101 Eligibility (BERT): 0.7097706829979128
- 35 USC 102 Novelty (BERT): 0.4839394095241224
- Combined Prediction Score: 0.6871875556505338
- Mean Citation Score: 160.679946
- Max Citation Score: 162.1379
- Similarity Product: 105.49913586651682

Labels:
- Claim Label 101: 1
- Claim Label 102: 1
- Claim Label 103: 1
- Claim Label 112: 1
- Combined Label: 1
- Label 101 Adjusted: 1

Dataset: test