Abstract: An apparatus for precision cutting lightweight, thin-walled tubes that includes transfer drums for transporting rough cut, thin-walled tubes from a source of supply past a first inspection station to determine if the tubes are crushed beyond a predetermined amount, a flaring station to flare the tube ends, an aligning station to align the tubes from cutting, and a cutting station to cut the tube into multiple sections. Section drums are provided that have second and third inspection stations to determine if the tubes have been properly cut.

Abstract: A macrocell with product term allocation and adjacent product term stealing is disclosed. Programmable configuration switches provide product term allocation by directing input product terms to an OR gate or to the secondary inputs to a register. Adjacent product term stealing is accomplished by providing the output of the OR gate of each macrocell as an input to the OR gate of an adjacent macrocell. By using the output of the OR gate of the first macrocell, the adjacent macrocell steals the product terms and the OR gate of the first macrocell for use in its own OR gate. An arbitrarily wide OR function can be implemented by daisy chaining the OR gates of adjacent macrocells. Because programmable configuration switches can direct individual input product terms to the register logic instead of the OR gate, the register logic can be used even when an adjacent macrocell steals the OR gate.

Abstract: A roller for use in fibrillating oriented films of polyolefin materials having a plurality of pins projecting from the surface of the roller. The pins are distributed in a plurality of rows spaced around the roller surface. The rows each contain about 25 to 34 pins per inch in a space-staggered relationship along two adjacent lines extending along the surface of the roller, either in a linear relationship inclined to a line parallel to the axis or rotation, or in a sinusoidal relationship with adjacent rows being in or out of phase. The roller is rotated and the film is advanced over the rotating roller surface for an arc length of contact of about 30 to 37 degrees to fibrillate the film. The ratio of the surface speed of the roller to the advancing film are controlled to a ratio between from about 1.8:1 to about 2.2:1.