ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 3 -- United States Patent no. 12,343,786, issued on July 1, was assigned to Atlas Copco IAS GmbH (Bretten-Goelshausen, Germany).

"Method and device for monitoring and/or control of a flow-hole and thread-forming process" was invented by Michael Ludsteck (Munich) and Manuel Guglhor (Benediktbeuren, Germany).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method and a device are provided for simplifying a flow-hole screw process, in which the difference between a process parameter and its smoothed value is employed as a criterion for changing said process parameter or another process parameter in order in particular to be able to determine the changeover point between hole forming and thr...