Chairs and seats – Body or occupant restraint or confinement – Safety belt or harness; e.g. – lap belt or shoulder harness
Patent
1987-09-30
1989-04-04
McCall, James T.
Chairs and seats
Body or occupant restraint or confinement
Safety belt or harness; e.g., lap belt or shoulder harness
280808, 297468, B60R 2110
Patent
active
048180238
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a device for incrementally adjusting the height of a securing point or a return-travel point for a safety belt or the like, comprising a guide rail and a guide sleeve that is displaceable on the guide rail. Engagement lugs on the one hand and corresponding recesses on the other are provided in such a way that for locking, the guide sleeve can be brought into fixed engagement with the guide rail crosswise to the actual displacement direction. The device also has a spring element, disposed between the guide rail and the guide sleeve, that is intended to keep the guide sleeve in the locking position.
Devices of this kind are used particularly for safety belts in motor vehicles. As is well known, it is conventional to provide a return-travel point on the vehicle support post above the shoulder of the wearer, while the ends of the safety belt as a rule are fixed to the floor of the vehicle, with one end on an automatic winder mechanism. Special return-travel fittings are usually attached to the return-travel point. These fittings are mainly rings, eyes, or the like, together with a screw-insertion piece. For the latter part, a screw thread is then provided on the guide sleeve.
Because the effectiveness of the safety belts depends to a not inconsiderable extent on their anatomically correct placement, which in turn is definitively influenced via the reverse-travel point in accordance with body size and posture, the devices for adjusting the height of the return-travel point become highly significant. There has accordingly been no lack of proposals thus far that describe such devices. However, most of them have the disadvantage of being quite complicated, or not strong enough.
PRIOR ART
Among the relatively simple devices are those defined by the preamble. In a known device of this kind, engagement lugs are provided on one edge of the guide rail, and the guide sleeve has a recess on the same edge, with which it can be moved into the vicinity of an engagement lug, crosswise to the actual displacement direction. When the guide sleeve and guide rail are in engagement, they are further locked by a spring element. The latter is located in the narrow gap between the edge of the guide rail oriented toward the engagement lugs and the corresponding edge of the guide sleeve. Because of its very slight width and its therefore unstable position, the spring element must also be provided with a special insert part. The insert part is preferably made from plastic and serves to guide and retain the spring element. Without this kind of insert part, major malfunctions would have to be expected.
This known device has a number of disadvantages. As noted above, not only the guide rail, guide sleeve and spring element must be provided, but another component made from a different material as well. This naturally makes manufacture and assembly expensive. Since in the load condition (collision) strong lateral traction is also operative, the guide rail must always be mounted only in such a way that the guide sleeve pulls into the edge of the guide rail having the engagement lugs. Assembly accordingly requires particular care. It may also be necessary to provide different guide rails for the left and right sides of the vehicle, one having engagement lugs on the left edge and the other on the right, or in other words to manufacture two different versions. This becomes a particularly important factor if the upper and lower end of the guide rail are embodied differently, for example one having a round hole and the other having an oblong slot, or the like. Finally, it has also been found that this embodiment is incapable of withstanding very high traction. Precisely at the edge provided with engagement lugs and hence with recesses, destruction and breakage in fact occur easily. Evidently, this is a structurally weak point.
Proposals are also already known according to which the guide rails are more uniformly stressed. However, this advantage is attained at the cost of other disadvantages. In
REFERENCES:
patent: 4552408 (1985-11-01), Ono
patent: 4597588 (1986-07-01), Kawai
patent: 4640550 (1987-02-01), Hakansson
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