Brushing – scrubbing – and general cleaning – Machines – With air blast or suction
Reexamination Certificate
1999-10-29
2001-01-30
Moore, Chris K. (Department: 1744)
Brushing, scrubbing, and general cleaning
Machines
With air blast or suction
C015S339000, C055S356000, C055S367000, C055S492000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06178592
ABSTRACT:
This invention relates to ballast frames placed on flexible mesh screen vents in flexible leaf collection bags and more particularly to ballast frames placed on screen mesh vents in large collection bags designed to collect large volumes of organic debris delivered by high velocity blower-driven airstreams, producing externally convex “ballooning” of the collection bag.
These ballast frames are considered to be improvements on the collector bags disclosed in my co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/984,335 filed Dec. 3, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,029,312, issued Feb. 29, 2000, and its disclosure is incorporated herein by reference.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The collection of leaves, grass clippings and other organic debris from lawn mowers into flexible collection bags is well known, and like vacuum cleaners, these collection bags rely on the porosity of woven fabric bags to exhaust the airstream carrying the debris after it is deposited in the bag. High volume lawn tractor mowers often collect the organic debris in collectors carried on a towed trailer, such as the large volume collector bags disclosed in my co-pending patent application. Even if such collector bags are made of tightly woven fabrics with minimum porosity, they may have mesh screen panels allowing exhaust air to escape after depositing entrained debris.
Fine particles and lighter weight pieces of leaves, grass clippings and other organic debris tend to clog the pores of woven fabric bags, and the pressure differential between the blower-driven internal bag inflation pressure and the external ambient atmosphere drives leaves and grass clippings against the interior surface of any mesh vent and plasters them there, partially embedded or caught in the mesh impeding the escape of exhaust air after it has delivered debris to the bag's interior. The resulting back pressure tends to resist delivery and deposit of more debris.
BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It has now been discovered that by counteracting the ballooning convex curvature of the mesh screen or vent, and positioning it in a substantially flat plane interposed at an acute angle to the travel direction of the arriving debris-laden airstream, the high velocity of this blower-driven stream literally peels any accumulated debris, clippings or leaves away from the interior of the mesh screen, promoting the escape of exhaust air therethrough.
A flat, rigid, open ballast frame overlying each mesh screen or vent and secured thereto by plastic cable ties, metal “hog rings” or other loose fastenings at several spaced-apart locations maintains the mesh screen in a suitable substantially flat plane. In any instance where the mesh screen is normally oriented close to horizontal in the upper part of the collector bag, if a distal edge of the ballast frame remote from the arriving airstream is weighted, the flattened mesh screen is thereby tilted aslant by an acute scavenging angle, measured from tangency to the screen to the airstream's delivery path, enabling the arriving airstream to peel any accumulated debris from the flattened inner surface of the screen.
Accordingly, a principal object of the invention is to facilitate unclogging of accumulated lightweight debris from the interior surface of mesh screen vents releasing exhaust airstreams from debris collection bags.
Another object is to achieve such unclogging by utilizing a substantially flat, economical mullioned frame loosely anchored to the mesh screen at a plurality of anchor points.
A further object is to enhance the removal of accumulated debris by orienting the assembly of mullioned frame and mesh screen edgewise in the arriving airstream and slanting at a small acute scavenging angle to the travel path of the airstream.
Still another object is to provide a downstream ballast weight on said mullioned frame, automatically achieving the acute slant angle when the screen-frame assembly is positioned in a generally horizontal position.
Other objects of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part appear hereinafter.
The invention accordingly comprises the features of construction, combination of elements, and arrangement of parts which will be exemplified in the construction hereinafter set forth, and the scope of the invention will be indicated in the claims.
REFERENCES:
patent: 2337936 (1943-12-01), Sellers
patent: 2803847 (1957-08-01), Hobbs
patent: 3524211 (1970-08-01), Wolf
patent: 3624989 (1971-12-01), Gatheridge
patent: 3790986 (1974-02-01), Burger
patent: 3813725 (1974-06-01), Rinker
patent: 4999038 (1991-03-01), Lundberg
patent: 6029312 (2000-02-01), Whitney
Moore Chris K.
Ware Fressola Van Der Sluys & Adolphson LLP
Woodland Power Products Inc.
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