Electricity: transmission to vehicles – Flexible extensions – Reels
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-29
2001-04-17
Morano, S. Joseph (Department: 3617)
Electricity: transmission to vehicles
Flexible extensions
Reels
C191S01200C, C191S01220R, C242S388900, C242S396100
Reexamination Certificate
active
06216834
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to arrangements in a protection container in order to enable feed-out of an electrical cable stored within the protection container, said cable, at one end thereof, having a plug/socket and, at the other end thereof, is supplied with electrical power, and wherein feed-in/withdrawal of the electrical cable into the protection container again is allowed after use.
Such a cable having a contact means of the plug or socket type at the free end thereof and, preferably, coupled to a power supply at the other end, can be used in connection with an electrical apparatus, machine or other device/means carrying a complementary contact means, e.g. a socket or a plug, respectively, the two mutually complementary contact means being plugable, one within the other. Said electrical apparatus, etc., may e.g. be constituted by engine heaters in motor vehicles, battery charging apparatus for electrical vehicles and the like. The cable may possibly be provided with signal conductors which, through remote control, may start/stop e.g. a motor heater or other apparatus.
Norwegian patent application No. 961492 discloses a feed-out device for a plug adapted to be plugged into a socket and positioned at the end of an electrical cable assigned a power supply. This automatically functioning feed-out device is not assigned a protection container as the one according to the present invention for the protective envelopment of cable with plug/socket, but serves exclusively to secure a controlled feed-out of the electrical cable's plug when it is pulled out from the socket in which it is plugged, the socket being incorporated into said electrical apparatus, etc., e.g. the engine heater; in case one has forgotten to haul the electrical cable's plug out from the socket of the engine heater.
When using engine heaters in motor vehicles, the electrical cable together with its plug, after the latter has been released upon being pulled out from the socket of the engine heater, often becomes lying unprotectedly on the ground, subjected to being overrun and damaged. In such an unprotected position, dirt and other impurities will easily find their way into the plug, and cable and plug can freeze firmly to the ground during periods of frost in the winter time. The plug at the end of the live electrical cable, in an unprotected position, lying on the ground, represents a risk factor for children. Upon contact with metal parts of the plug, a child may get an electrical shock.
Norwegian patent specification No. 165 088 discloses an apparatus adapted to cause an automatic hauling of the electrical cable's plug up to a higher positioned level in a garage or the like. This prior art apparatus is very comprehensive. As mentioned, it is based on an operation including a hauling of the plug of the cable up to a position in which it is not available to a child, i.e. a position in which the plug does not represent a risk factor, but the apparatus does not comprise a protection container for protective envelopment of cable and plug/socket in an inoperative position of readiness. For the installation thereof, this known hauling apparatus requires a column of a not insignificantly height.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Therefore, the object of the present invention has been to eliminate or, to a substantial degree, reduce deficiencies, disadvantages and restrictions of use associated with prior art technique as represented through the above-mentioned Norwegian patent publications and, thus, provide a protection container in which cable with plug/socket are protectively enclosed in inoperative position of readiness, and from where the cable can be pulled out through the plug/socket at the end thereof, in order to plug the cable's plug into the socket of the engine heater, etc., tensioning the cable appropriately in the position of use, the cable and, thus, the plug/socket not being subjected to undesired external tractive forces in this position of use, but where the cable with the plug/socket, after use, is subjected to a controlled withdrawal into the protection container.
Another object consists in providing a protection container which is closed in the protective position and formed with a hatchway which can be closed/opened by means of a movable hatch cover which, in addition to its primary tasks, to open or to close the hatchway of the protection container as well as to enable operations resulting in the feed-out/feed-in of the cable respectively enclosing the cable with its plug/socket protectively within a closed container, is adapted to participate in a tensioning feed-in displacement of a cable which has been pulled too far out when it was plugged into e.g. an engine heater's socket, respectively is adapted to be retained in a locked intermediate position between wholly open and closed position, in order to counteract that the cable with the plug becomes subjected to tractive forces from the protection container's feed-in device in the position of use.
The hatch cover may be lockable, possibly through timed payment device (as a parking-meter).
Likewise, one has aimed at providing a protection container in which the hatch cover is pivotable about an upper, substantially horizontal axis at the top of the protection container, and wherein the hatch cover's tooth segment, friction surface segment or the like extends along a fraction of 360° and cooperates with a rotatable ratchet wheel having a toothing, cogging, friction surface or the like along the entire circumference thereof, and along which the cable has been placed, e.g. in a circumferential groove, outside the toothing, cogging, friction surface, etc., and is guided during feed-out (drawing out) and feed-in (withdrawal).
As the ratchet segment of the hatch cover follows the pivotal movement of the latter, it only engages the ratchet wheel during a certain rotational angle zone for the hatch cover, e.g. within a pivotal angle area of 17-47° for the hatch cover in relation to vertical. The ratchet segment can circumferentialwise extend across about 30° in relation to the substantially horizontal pivotal axis of the hatch cover. Thus, the ratchet segment of the hatch cover is out of engagement with said rotatable ratchet wheel in the completely swung up (substantially horizontal) position of the hatch cover and in the completely swung down (substantially vertical) position thereof.
The pivotal movability of the hatch cover and the mentioned ratchet device for the same cause that the electrical cable with the end plug, from a protected storage position within the protection container, unhindered can be pulled out after the hatch cover has been swung up. A cable which has been pulled out to an extensive length, enabling the pulled out cable length to hang down, reaching the ground wholly or partly after the plug thereof has been plugged into the socket of e.g. an engine heater, will be withdrawn into the protection container's opening until the cable is tensioned to an appropriate stretching, while the hatch cover swings down until its ratchet segment is in engagement with the ratchet wheel and is locked in this slopingly downwardly directed, intermediate, open position, fixing the cable in this adequately stretched position of use until there no longer exists a need for transfer of electrical power to the engine heater. Then, the locking of the hatch cover is neutralized, whereafter it is retained in an non-locked, open position while the feed-in means of the protection container pulls the cable into the container again. The hatch cover may have at least one stop for limiting the withdrawal of the cable's plug/socket, so that it at any time will take an easily available position after the cover has been swung up.
The protection container's withdrawal means may be based on weight and/or spring means.
The ratchet wheel which also operates as a guiding wheel for the cable, may be formed with one or two parallel, 360° extending circumferential grooves placed laterally of the an
Andrus Sceales Starke & Sawall LLP
Jules Frantz F.
Morano S. Joseph
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