Shielding and sealing gasket material and methods of fabricating it

Claim 2

In a method of making shielding and sealing gasket material, the steps comprising: supporting continuously corrugated electrically conductive wires on a plurality of window-type frames, with all wires on each frame being separated from one another and parallely disposed thereon; stacking said frames, with a separate sheet of a resilient plastic substance on either side of each frame, with all wires in said stack in substantially parallel alignment, with wires in adjacent frames insulated from one another by the sheet of resilient plastic substance therebetween; and bonding together the separate sheets of resilient plastic substance, with the wires therebetween, to form a homogenous unitary resilient body with wires parallely disposed therein, with opposite ends of each wire exposed at two opposite sides of said body, each wire being shaped to form corrugations along its axis extending between the wire''s opposite ends, with adjacent corrugations being on opposite sides of said axis, removing the frames; wherein the supporting of electrically conductive wires comprises the steps of: supporting a plurality of frames on a structure; rotating said frames on said structure about a selected longitudinal axis of rotation, each frame having an axis parallel to said axis of rotation and spaced therefrom; spirally winding a continuously corrugated conductive wire on said rotating frames to form a multi-convolution helix having a longitudinal axis coincident with said axis of rotation, whereby the wire in each convolution extends across each frame and in contact with two opposite sides of each frame which are parallel to said axis of rotation; securing the corrugated wires extending across each frame at the two opposite frame sides with which the wires are in contact; and separating the corrugated wires extending between frames, for removing the frames with the wires secured thereon from said structure.

Claim 3

In a method of making shielding and sealing gasket material, the steps comprising: supporting continuously corrugated electrically conductive wires on a plurality of window-type frames, with all wires on each frame being separated from one another and parallely disposed thereon: stacking said frames, with a separate sheet of a resilient plastic substance comprising curable silicone rubber on either side of each frame, with all wires in said stack in substantially parallel alignment, with wires in adjacent frames insulated from one another by the sheet of resilient plastic substance comprising curable silicone rubber therebetween; bonding together the separate sheets of resilient plastic substance comprising curable silicone rubber comprises curing said sheets to form a resilient rubber-like body of material, with the wires therebetween to form a homogeneous unitary resilient body with wires parallely disposed therein, with opposite ends of each wire exposed at two opposite sides of said body, each wire being shaped to form corrugations along its axis extending between the wire''s opposite ends, with adjacent corrugations being on opposite sides of said axis, wherein the supporting of electrically conductive wires comprises the steps of: supporting a plurality of frames on a structure; rotating said frames on said structure about a selected longitudinal axis of rotation, each frame having an axis parallel to said axis of rotation and spaced therefrom; spirally winding a continuously corrugated conductive wire on said rotating frames to form a multi-convolution helix having a longitudinal axis coincident with said axis of rotation, whereby the wire in each convolution extends across each frame and in contact with two opposite sides of each frame and in contact with two opposite sides of each frame which are parallel to said axis of rotation; securing the corrugated wires extending across each frame at the two opposite frame sides with which the wires are in contact; and separating the corrugated wires extending between frames, for removing the frames with wires secured thereon from said structure.

Claim 4

In a method of making shielding and sealing gasket material, the steps comprising: corrugating non-corrugated electrically conductive wires to possess a selected number of corrugations per inch of wire length with the corrugations having controllable heights Supporting the corrugated electrically conductive wires on a plurality of window-type frames, with all wires on each frame being separated from one another and parallely disposed thereon; stacking said frames, with a separate sheet of a resilient plastic substance on either side of each frame, with all wires in said stack in substantially parallel alignment, with wires in adjacent frames insulated from one another by sheet of resilient plastic substance therebetween; and bonding together the separate sheets of resilient plastic substance, with the wires therebetween, to form a homogeneous unitary resilient body with wires parallely disposed therein, with opposite ends of each wire exposed at two opposite sides of said body, each wire being shaped to form corrugations along its axis extending between the wire''s opposite ends, with adjacent corrugations being on opposite sides of said axis, wherein the supporting of the corrugated electrically conductive wires comprises the steps of: supporting a plurality of frames on a structure; rotating said frames on said structure about a selected longitudinal axis of rotation, each frame having an axis parallel to said axis of rotation and spaced therefrom; spirally winding the corrugated conductive wire on said rotating frames to form a multi-convolution helix having a longitudinal axis coincident with said axis of rotation, whereby the wire in each convolution extends across each frame and in contact with two opposite sides of each frame which are parallel to said axis of rotation; securing the corrugated wires extending across each frame at the two opposite frame sides with which the wires are in contact; and separating the corrugated wires extending between frames, for removing the frames with the wires secured thereon from said structure.

Claim 6

The arrangement as recited in claim 1 wherein the step of stacking said frames includes the steps of placing on a first sheet of a resilient plastic substance a plurality of separate spaced apart continuously undulating wires, each defining a longitudinal axis extending between first and second ends of the wire with successive undulations being disposed on opposite sides of the longitudinal axis, with said wires being in substantial parallel alignment with the first ends of the wires exposed at a first side of said first sheet and the wires'' second ends exposed at a second side of said first sheet, opposite said first side, covering said first sheet with a similar second sheet and repeating the step of placing wires thereon, the unitary resilient body having substantially uniform resiliency characteristics, in a direction parallel to said first and second sides and in a direction perpendicular thereto.