Article support stand

Details Article support stand Article support stand

2001-07-27

2003-03-04

King, Anita (Department: 3632)

Supports

Video display screen support

Ancillary device support associated with a video display screen

C248S444000, C248S447000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06527247

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to supports for an article and particularly to supports that rely on the weight of other objects for stability. More specifically, this invention relates to an article support stand for use with a computer monitor.
2. Description of Related Art
Some article supports are stable without any tie-down hardware, while others require some form of hardware to secure their base to a supporting surface to prevent them from toppling over. Yet a third kind of supports (hereinafter called “supports of the third kind”) rely on the weight of another nearby object (hereinafter called “stabilizing object”) for stabilization. In most cases concerning supports of the third kind the stabilizing object's weight is harnessed by sliding a portion of the stabilized support base (hereinafter called “tongue”) between the bottom of the stabilizing object and its supporting surface. The stabilizing object must be of sufficient weight and positioned in such a way so as to provide a counter-moment equal to, or greater than, that attempting to topple over the support. The moments and counter-moments mentioned act around axes that are substantially parallel to the surface on which the support base rests.
The present invention corresponds to supports of the third kind cited above. Examples of supports of the third kind are portrayed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,168,791 issued to D. W. Nutting on Feb. 9, 1965, U.S. Pat. No. 4,582,285 issued to Bello on Apr. 15, 1986, U.S. Pat. No. 5,799,795 issued to Mease on Sep. 1, 1998 and U.S. Pat. No. 6,027,092 issued to Gordon on Feb. 22, 2000.
One problem associated with supports of the third kind is the need to raise at least a portion of the stabilizing object's base off its supporting surface in order to insert the tongue of a support under it. In many cases the base of an object is designed to engage the supporting surface equally around its base. For example, a computer monitor is designed to contact its supporting surface equally around its base. In the case of four-legged objects it's advantageous to have all four legs in contact with the supporting surface. When an object's base engages its supporting surface equally around its base, the contact pressure on the supporting surface is minimized. Conversely, when one side, or one corner of an object is raised off its supporting surface, only a small portion of the object's base remains in contacts with its supporting surface, and the contact pressure at the contacting locations increases substantially.
In many cases it is advantageous to minimize the contact pressure between an object and its supporting surface. For example, objects that reside on top of expensive, varnished desks: The larger the area of the object's base that contacts the desk surface, the less likely is the base to indent or leave a mark on the desk surface. The same holds true for object bases that rest on carpets: Minimizing the contact pressure on the carpet reduces the likelihood of damaging the carpet. In the case of four-legged stabilizing objects, the problem of raising one or two legs of such objects off their supporting surfaces is dramatized: If one of the object's legs is raised off its supporting surface, the object will not only rock, but the bulk of the object's weight will then be divided between two legs instead of four, putting evermore stress on the object's supporting surface.
To summarize, when an article support is to be stabilized by another stabilizing object by slipping a portion of the stabilized object's base underneath a portion of the stabilizing object's base thus significantly raising only a small portion of the stabilizing object's base, the stabilizing object's base no longer contacts its supporting surface equally as intended by its design, and contact pressures between the stabilizing object's base and its supporting surface increase substantially and may damage the supporting surface as described above. The term “significantly raising” means raised beyond the acceptable distortion of the object, or raised to a point that violates the design intent of the object. A design intent for a coffee table, for example, would be that its top surface remain substantially horizontal, at least to the extent that a cylindrical object, such as a round pen or pencil, would not roll off the table. Most wood and plastic objects are flexible to a certain extent, and the bases of such objects will distort slightly to conform to the supporting surface when raised unequally. Take a four-legged table on a wooden floor for example: Sliding a piece of paper under one leg will most probably not cause the table to rock and will only slightly redistribute the table's weight among the four legs. But sliding a piece of heavy cardboard under just one of the table's legs will cause most tables to rock. When an object rocks, or the corner of an object applies more force on its supporting surface than it normally should, the design intent of the object has been violated.
It can be seen from the above presentation that when a support relies on the weight of another object for stabilization by having a portion of the support's base, for example a tongue, positioned under the base of the stabilizing object, it is advantageous to make the tongue of the support base as thin as possible so as not to significantly violate the design intent of the stabilizing object.
Another problem associated with supports of the third kind is the fact that many surface-supported stabilizing objects have superstructures that have a larger footprint than their bases do. A computer monitor, for example, typically has a base that is smaller than the monitor itself when viewed from above. In order to slip the tongue of a support to be stabilized under such an object's base, the tongue must be made longer in order to reach the stabilizing object's base. The longer the tongue the more it is sutbject to bending stresses and deflections, and those particular types of stresses and deflections on the support's tongue are disadvantageous as will be shown in the following discussion.
When the relatively thin tongue of a support base is inserted under a stabilizing object, the following three cases may occur:
a) The tongue extends a certain distance away from the stabilizing object's edge as shown in
FIG. 1
,
b) the portion of the tongue immediately adjacent to the stabilizing object's edge is much thicker (say more than ten times, for simplicity) than the thin portion of the tongue as shown in
FIG. 2
, or
c) the thin portion of the tongue adjacent to the stabilizing object's edge abruptly changes direction upwards as shown in FIG.
3
.
The dimensions and forces given in the figures represent a typical, real life situation. The 20 pound force is the force applied by the stabilizing object on the tongue of the stabilized support. To simplify calculations we will assume here that the depth of all objects in the figures is 1″.
Using elementary stress and strain analysis and assuming that 1) the thin portion in
FIG. 1
acts approximately as a cantilevered beam, and that 2) the tongue material is steel, approximate calculations will show that the upward movement of the vertical portions of the supports in question are respectively:
Case a) 0.012″ (in bending),
Case b) 0.00003″ (in shear), and
Case c) 0.00006″ (in shear and tension).
From the above results we can see that in case (a), where a 1″portion of the tongue is not inserted under the stabilizing object, the upward movement of the support is about 400 times that of case (b) and about 200 times that of case (c).
One could argue that the deflection in case (a) is still very small, but it should be understood here that the above numbers illustrate the relative amount of motion between the three cases. In other words, for a given tongue thickness configured to work as in case (a), changing the configuration to work

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