Stock material or miscellaneous articles – Hollow or container type article – Polymer or resin containing
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-22
2001-05-15
Le, Hoa T. (Department: 1773)
Stock material or miscellaneous articles
Hollow or container type article
Polymer or resin containing
C052S003000, C052S309100, C052S309500, C428S332000, C428S337000, C428S339000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06231940
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to an interior fixture or fitting part for vehicles and to an associated method of producing interior fixture or fitting parts. The invention particularly relates to motor vehicles, but it can also be used in other vehicles, such as rail vehicles or aircraft.
RELATED ART
There is a variety of different material compositions and production processes for interior fixture or fitting parts in motor vehicles, such as dashboards, center consoles or door trims. To lend the vehicle interior an attractive design, a wide variety of decorative materials is used on the visible side of the interior fixtures and fittings, e.g. plastic films, velour, fabric or imitation leather. Natural leather is used as a decorative material in the case of more exclusive interior fixtures and fittings.
Since real leather is a natural material, the aspects which must be taken into consideration when natural leather is processed differ from those relevant to synthetic decorative materials. In this way, natural leather's tendency to shrink during leather processing plays an important part. As a decorative material for interior fixture or fitting parts with a rigid molded support part, such as dashboards, natural leather has so far been attached directly to the rigid molded support parts. As a result, the rigid molded support part supports the leather cover applied thereto. With this material structure and the associated known production processes, the natural leather is lent adequate adhesion on the shaping rigid support part and the natural leather's direct support counteracts shrinkage of the leather cover. If such an interior fixture or fitting part with decorative natural leather is touched, the part feels correspondingly hard, apart from the minimum flexibility of the leather itself.
On the other hand, it is known from patent DE 33 36 934 C2 that upholstery consisting of a foam body should be provided in the lower region of a vehicle's dashboard in order thereby to achieve a dashboard flexibility which reduces injuries. The foam body, e.g. composed of a soft-textured polyurethane, is provided with a cover of foam sheeting, textile material, imitation leather or leather. Patent DE 36 06 375 C2 which originates from the same applicant also describes an interior fixture or fitting part with a flexible padding layer. What is proposed is a method in which an additional leather cover is subsequently affixed to the interior fixture or fitting part covered with a plastic film so as to upgrade the quality of the occupant interior. In these known interior fixture or fitting parts, such a substantial flexibility is therefore aimed at that injuries, e.g. sustained during an unintentional collision or an impact caused by an accident, are avoided.
Yet it would be desirable to implement a certain limited degree of flexibility for the decorative natural leather in the case of interior fixtures and fittings which are per se rigid and which come with natural leather decorative features, such as dashboards or center consoles, since the interior fixture or fitting part consequently produces a special haptic quality, i.e. a particular tactile sensation, thus lending the interior fixtures and fittings a specific character. The flexibility or softness is only intended to be slight in comparison to a degree of absorption which reduces injuries.
Published document DE-OS 29 17 907 A1 describes a method of producing a dashboard; in this method, a flat piece of material that preferably comprises a semi-rigid resin, e.g. PVC, is bonded with a flat piece of foam material and such a laminate formed in this manner is joined by means of adhesive to a base member, e.g. made of ABS artificial resin. This publication also mentions leather as a flat piece of material instead of the semi-rigid resin, though without discussing in more detail the specific problems associated with processing real leather as a natural material in comparison with a synthetic material such as PVC.
For although a rear padding of natural leather using foam would make it possible to achieve a certain flexibility when the decorative material is touched, it has been shown in practice that the natural leather's tendency to shrink—e.g. when there are stresses due to climatic changes—causes it to peel away particularly in concavely shaped areas of the interior fixture or fitting part or produces a wavy or uneven surface aspect. This problem also exists in the case of the aforementioned foam upholstery which reduces injuries if this padding is covered with decorative natural leather.
A large-surface heat-deformable plastic trim part for the interior of an automobile and a method for its production are indeed known from DE 41 41 113 A1. In this trim part, however, a decorative layer of mainly polyolefinically constructed polymers is laminated during the process of forming the molded part; this layer comprises a multilayer knitted or woven fabric with knitted-in spacers made of preferably polyolefinic polymer fibers, with only applied decorative textile surfaces or printed or embossed plastic films as well as woven, knitted textiles or nonwoven fabrics being envisaged as a decorative layer. Obviously a natural material, such as natural leather is not used here and is not envisaged either. This document evidently aims at a uniformity of materials for the overall structure, by exclusively using polymer-based components. This is intended to solve the recycling problem felt to be a drawback in the prior art described therein. A polymer material is also always envisaged in the case of that version of the knitted spacer fabric with topside coating. The knitted spacer fabric's topside coating is to be constituted for example by a polyolefin film, onto which a surface structure is impressed. It can therefore be stated in summary that the knitted spacer fabric's top layer provided here is to be decoratively finished off toward the visible side, either by an embossed film or by a decorative textile effect. Material uniformity is always the overriding aspect. The problems associated with the use of natural materials, such as natural leather, cannot be taken into consideration for these materials and such problems do not occur either.
Although DE 42 14 389 A1 also describes a layer composition of a decorative or surface layer, an adjoining, easily yielding spacer layer and optionally a backing joined thereto, the emphasis in this previously known solution—similar to the aforementioned DE 41 41 113 A1—is also placed on a recyclable product composition that exhibits material uniformity. The three layers are therefore each supposed to comprise an identical or similar plastic or to contain this plastic. The individual layers are also intended to be joined together without the use of adhesives. The use of additional adhesives is felt to be a disadvantage here.
Finally, DE 195 45 596 A1 describes an inner trim and/or seat cover fabric for vehicles which comprises a multilayer fabric with a textile backing cloth, a top web and a formed fabric (nonwoven fabric) layer. The backing cloth is a fine-meshed knitted fabric with tied-up pile loops torn by napping and composed of a staple-fiber or multifilament yarn with a plurality of single fibers, the napped pile of which forms a padding layer in the form of a napped fiber web. The technical problem that is to be solved by the present invention—i.e. to lend interior fixture or fitting parts (which are rigid per se and which are to be provided with decorative natural leather) a specific flexibility or softness which is supposed to be only slight in comparison to an absorptive capacity which reduces injuries—therefore does not even arise here. Without a rigid molded support part, decorative natural leather would not entail any separation problems either, because the overall layer composition would after all be flexible, as is for example the case with a vehicle seat cover. The solution of incorporating pile threads composed of fibrous materials into the backing cloth is likewi
Aichner Rudolf
Böckel Hermann
Friedberger Roland
Eldra Kunststofftechnik GmbH
Finnegan Henderson Farabow Garrett & Dunner L.L.P.
Le Hoa T.
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