New Apple Patent Describes 'Aesthetically Pleasing' Welding Methods for CE Gear
Methods for welding together two pieces of metal while “improving the aesthetic look and feel” of consumer electronics gear and other products are described in a patent that Apple landed Tuesday, Patent and Trademark Office documents show. The patent (US 9,364,922) names a team of five Apple inventors and is based on a March 2014 application, the PTO records show.
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Joining together at least two metal pieces “includes such processes as welding in its many forms,” the patent says. But most “applications” for joining together two pieces of metal focus “more on the strength of the bond and less on the appearance of the bond,” it says. Bicycle frames and car frames are examples of applications in which welds easily can be made attractive by being ground down and "painted over," it says. But the trend in consumer electronics without such remedies available is to use materials that are “strong, resilient and aesthetically pleasing,” it says.
One such material is aluminum, which has “the ability to be formed into any number of suitable shapes, anodized to provide a protective coat that is also pleasing to the eye, and provide an overall aesthetically pleasing experience to the user,” the patent says. “However, when using aluminum to create enclosures, such as a housing for a computer assembly, several separate pieces of aluminum must be joined together.”
Any “visible artifact,” such as a noticeable seam, variation in color or variation in surface texture “can distract from the overall aesthetic appearance of the consumer product,” the patent says. “Clearly these visible artifacts are not acceptable when a computer manufacturer places a high value on both the strength of the bond and the appearance of the housing.” Though the “prior art” of previous inventions “effectively discloses any number of techniques for joining together at least two metal pieces, there is still a need for a metal joining technique that provides a strong as well as apparently seamless metal joint,” it says.
In some “embodiments” of the welding methods described, the edge of a second piece of metal includes a “sacrificial lip,” the patent says. The two pieces of metal are joined together to form a “junction area,” which in turn applies a “forging force” to the first piece of metal, it says. The forging force has “an effect of creating an extremely tight fit up between the first and the second pieces of metal at the junction area,” and the ensuing weld is “essentially invisible to an observer,” it says. In the end, the final construction forms “a cosmetically enhancing protective layer on the surface of the assembly, the protective layer obscuring any visible artifacts on the surface of the assembly,” it says. Apple representatives didn’t comment on plans to use the invention commercially.