US Patent Issued to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Toyota Jidosha on Aug. 11 for "System and method for cracking a connecting rod" (Japanese, American Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Aug. 12 -- United States Patent no. 12,703,048, issued on Aug. 11, was assigned to Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America Inc. (Plano, Texas) and Toyota Jidosha K.K. (Toyota, Japan).

"System and method for cracking a connecting rod" was invented by Craig Allen Buchanan (Milton, W.va.), Adam Joseph Haynes (Charleston, W.va.), Toshiki Fujikawa (Hurricane, W.va.), Yasuhiro Waki (Nagoya, Japan) and Yuya Fukaya (Nagoya, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method for creating a cracking line in a connecting rod includes etching, using a first pass of a laser, a groove in an inner surface of a larger bore of a connecting rod by removing material from the inner sur...