Aldila is Picking Up the Pace

August 13, 2007July 9, 2018 admin 770 Views

You may recall a post from last month regarding Aldila’s first patent in 25 years. Since that post Aldila has had two patent applications publish. It looks like they may be getting more aggressive with their patenting strategy.

The first published application is US Pub. No. 20070173345 titled “Golf Club Shaft and Method of Producing the Same.” Check out the following figure and description from this published application:

A composite golf club shaft having a reinforcing ribbon of composite material spiraling along an intermediate portion of the shaft and bonded thereto to reinforce the hoop strength of the shaft. The ribbon is shaped into a rib of different cross-sectional shapes, the preferred embodiment being a thin rectangular shape approximately 0.125 wide of an inch and spiraling at a rate of four turns per inch, producing a groove of equal width. The methods of the invention produces the shaft by providing a mandrel having the outside shape desired for the shaft’s inside surface; wrapping a ribbon of reinforcing material around the shaft in a spiral groove therein; forming the shaft body around the mandrel; and separating the mandrel from the shaft after curing, by unscrewing the mandrel.

The second published patent application is US Pub. No. 20070184914 titled “Method for Producing Golf Shafts of Like Flex.” Check out the following figure and description from this published application:

The method of producing tubular golf club shafts (10) of the same longitudinal stiffness and varying weights by wrapping composite materials on a tapered mandrel (15), or mandrels, having a given taper profile, producing a core (30) of angle-fiber-and-resin material and a shell (31) of longitudinal-fiber-and-resin material, and varying the weight of the cores to vary the shaft weight while maintaining the core size and the shell size the same. This is accomplished by moving the core along a taper profile to compensate for the change in the amount of material, thus maintaining the longitudinal stiffness/bending profile the same in the shafts of greatly varying weight. A representative family of shafts (10) has nominal weights of 55, 65, 75, 85, 95 and 105 grams, with the same stiffness/bending profile.

Congratulations Aldila. Sounds like a couple of great inventions.

David Dawsey – Watching Golf Shaft Inventions and Patents