Metal working – Method of mechanical manufacture – Disassembling
Reexamination Certificate
1999-11-22
2001-10-09
Echols, P. W. (Department: 3726)
Metal working
Method of mechanical manufacture
Disassembling
C029S270000, C029S239000, C081S015900, C254S0930HP
Reexamination Certificate
active
06298539
ABSTRACT:
The present invention concerns an appliance for use in the authorised opening of locks in the doors of automobiles in situations in which the driver of the automobile has locked himself out, typically by having slammed the door shut after having left a combined door- and ignition key in the automobile with the doors now consequently locked. The relevant motorist breakdown services receive many calls annually concerning emergency assistance in such situations.
In order to open a door which has been locked in this manner, it is almost universal practice to gain access to the door locking system by removing or locally compressing the rubber sealing strip which normally exists at the outer upper edge of the door, which receives the lowerable automobile window, in that this makes it possible to insert a tool along the outer side of the window for the gripping of a relevant part of the lock system for the unlatching of the lock. If the sealing strip is torn off, it can prove difficult to replace this in a proper manner, and therefore it is instead normally preferred to carry out said compression of the strip whereby it is only influenced locally without removal.
Such a compression is relatively easy to effect by the insertion of a wedge-shaped tool down along the outer side of the lower part of the window. However, this downward-insertion can give rise to damage to the sealing strip, i.e. in the last phase where the strip is influenced towards maximum horizontal compression during the continued downwards insertion of the wedge-shaped tool.
With the present invention it has been found possible in an attractive manner to utilise a completely different kind of appliance for this purpose, i.e. a flat, inflatable pillow with opposing, flexible and mutually edge-assembled and substantially distensible side parts between which air can be introduced for the distension of the flat pillow, especially at its middle region, for example with a rubber ball connected via a tube.
A flat pillow such as this can in its pressed-flat condition appear as a quite thin element which, while although being flexible, is in its own plane a quite stiff element, e.g. consisting of two layers of armoured plastic foil of sufficient thinness to enable it to be easily inserted down between the outer side of the automobile window and the inner edge of the said sealing list until the middle region of the flat pillow lies level with this inner edge.
Thereafter, when air is pressed into the flat pillow, this will distend mostly in precisely its middle region, in that because of the distensible side surfaces it will not behave in the manner of a balloon, which will distend in all directions where there is no external counter-pressure, but will be forced to distend mostly in precisely the middle region. Therefore, the flat pillow will be particularly suitable for said application in co-operating with the inner edge of the selling strip, in that the same pillow, regardless of the fact that it extends both upwardly and downwardly from this edge area, will transfer its compressive force precisely to the edge area and the opposite glass surface without any significant bulging-out neither over nor under the edge area of the sealing list.
The result will be that after the downwards insertion of the flat pillow in its completely flat state, and by the inflation of the pillow element, it will effect an outwardly directed displacement of the sealing strip without this being connected with any form of downwardly-directed movement by the relevant appliance, i.e. without the sealing strip being damaged in any way, in that it can subsequently be gently relieved of the displacement merely by exhausting the air from the inflated pillow. This can thereafter easily be drawn up in its now re-established flat state, again without any related and significant scraping effect on the sealing strip which is again almost fully expanded.
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Equalizer Industries catalog, undesignated pages (incomplete), 1992.*
Equalizer Industries Catalog, p. 49 (incomplete), 1999.
Blount Steve
Echols P. W.
Nixon & Peabody LLP
Safran David S.
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