ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 16 -- United States Patent no. 12,668,359, issued on June 30, was assigned to Textron Innovations Inc. (Providence, R.I.).
"Universal-joint rotor-hub method and system" was invented by Kyle Thomas Cravener (Arlington, Texas), Andrew Harloff (Fort Worth, Texas) and Andrew Maresh (Colleyville, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A universal-joint cross assembly includes a cross. Four compression rings are mounted at terminal positions of the cross. Each of the four compression rings is positioned at a 90deg interval relative to adjacent ones of the four compression rings. The universal-joint cross assembly includes four inner balls. Each of the four inner balls is fixed t...