Supports – Brackets – Specially mounted or attached
Reexamination Certificate
1997-02-14
2002-06-25
Ramirez, Ramon O. (Department: 3632)
Supports
Brackets
Specially mounted or attached
C248S230100, C248S230700
Reexamination Certificate
active
06409131
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present disclosure relates to holders and supports, generally, and to multiple-purpose, light duty holders and support brackets that may be quickly mounted and de-mounted, in particular. Because the apparatus may be so readily installed and removed, it is particularly suited for supporting articles such as hospital bed controls, intravenous medication dispensers, blood bottles, telephones, beverage containers, flashlights, fishing poles, trays of small parts, w tools, or other objects that are preferably removed or relocated easily.
BACKGROUND AND SUMMARY
Many vocational and recreational activities are more easily performed if some object can be held in a desired position without the continuing assistance of a person. For example, it is often helpful to have a flashlight illuminate an object such as a threaded fastener or a knot while a person manipulates the object. Some tasks simply do not leave a person with a hand free to hold a needed tool or part.
To illustrate the generality of the problem, one need only consider the variety of techniques that have been tried to make light available at the location at which a person is working. Miners and campers have long used head lamps. A portable light can be mounted on a hat or headband and used to illuminate the area the wearer faces, but such head lamps can require frequent adjustment and often are quite annoying to other members of a group. One type of flashlight incorporates a magnet in the handle for holding it in place. Unfortunately, the orientation of an iron bearing surface is not always favorable for lighting purposes. Another flashlight has a clip for attachment to clothing, panels, or lines. Another type uses a heavy battery as a base and a pivotable lamp head to direct light to the desired area. None of these solutions has proven wholly satisfactory which suggests why so much inventive effort is directed to the field.
Building construction, repair, maintenance, equipment installation, machine work, vehicle repair and maintenance, and home projects are among the activities that often must be undertaken in substandard lighting conditions. Workers in these activities often must carry all of the tools that they expect to use for a specific job long distances to reach the location at which the work will be performed. It is rarely practical to carry bulky or complex additional items such as light stands in addition to the tools, parts and materials that are required. Workers will frequently carry flashlights to enable them to go forward with their appointed tasks. They might carry and use simple, lightweight, compact mounting brackets to allow them to use their flashlights to illuminate a work area more easily if such brackets were known to work.
Hospitals are an example of an environment in which specialized arrangements of tubes, containers, wires, sensors, controls, and other items must be established temporarily, for periods ranging from a few minutes to several days. Although hospitals use rails to restrain patients from accidentally sliding out of bed, patients often find that things like call buttons, operating controls, and telephones do slide out of their reach. If easily attached and easily removed support brackets for holding items in the desired arrangement around patients could be provided at low cost, hospitals might find fewer requests for nursing assistance to re-locate television or bed operating controls that slip beyond a patient's reach.
Another example of an environment in which it is often difficult for people to properly secure needed items is the wheel chair. Persons who rely on wheel chairs or motorized chairs for their mobility often find it difficult to keep often used items such as a drinking vessel, a notepad, a urine collection bag, or other personal items secured and accessible within the confines of the wheel chair structure. The present disclosure gives wheel chair users a simple means for conveniently securing the previously mentioned articles, as well as many others, to the chair.
People who fish from the banks of lakes, rivers or ponds often find it inconvenient to hold their fishing poles or rods continuously. Ingenious fishing rod holders have been proposed; U.S. Pat. No. 1,410,798 to Cowdery is but one example. However, the previously patented fishing rod holders suffer from one or more shortcomings: the mechanism may be too complex, the range of adjustment too small, the apparatus too cumbersome, or the mounting requirements impractical to fulfill.
Of course, temporary lighting for people in the construction trades, temporary hospital patient fixtures and accessory retainers, and temporary holders for fishing rods are but examples that illustrate representative uses for temporary holders and supports. Many other activities are made easier if temporary supports or holders can be readily set up and removed with a minimum investment of time and expense.
My discovery solves many of the problems inherent in previously known temporary supports. It is easy to install, inexpensive, simple, lightweight and compact. One embodiment I disclose can be attached to an existing building structural component (e.g. ½ inch electrical conduit) by placing the bracket portion over the structural component and twisting the bracket ¼ turn. Likewise, the present apparatus can be mounted to a great variety of fixed elongated members with a simple ¼ turn. For example, the bracket may be attached to safety rails, ring stands, hospital bedposts, electrical conduit, water pipes, gas pipes, scaffolding, and many other solidly mounted structural elements such as brackets, mounts, standards, holders, and the like. For ease of reference, the object to which my bracket attaches will be called a prop, and the term prop is explicitly defined to include all objects to which my bracket can be attached. It is possible to use the handles of a two-wheeled hand truck as props. It is likewise possible to use the handle of a cart, or of a broom, as the prop to which an embodiment of the present multiple-purpose support system attaches.
After the bracket is attached to a prop, the bracket may be used to support any desired object that weighs less than the holding capacity of both the bracket and of the prop, as configured. In one embodiment, the bracket is fitted with a hook from which a blood bottle can be suspended. In another embodiment, the bracket is fitted with a series of hooks capable of holding several objects, for example, frequently used tools. In another embodiment, the bracket may be fitted with a spring clamp that can hold objects such as a map, a set of instructions, a sign, or the like. In another embodiment, the bracket may be fitted with one end of a bendable, non-resilient, shape-retaining linkage that has a holder at its other end. One example of such a linkage is the snap-apart flexible coolant conduit manufactured by Lockwood Industries of Lake Oswego, Oregon.
Although many other utility support devices and brackets have been designed, one problem remains that none has successfully overcome—the necessity of compromising the design of the device so that it is sufficiently rigid to support the desired object from the lever arm created by the device itself, without making the device excessively rigid, heavy, bulky or wasteful of materials. It is to be appreciated that any support member will perform more satisfactorily if the purpose to which it is put is appropriate for the design. This principle can be illustrated by consideration of the ordinary laboratory ring stand.
A laboratory ring stand usually has as its base a fairly heavy rectangular plate that is placed flat on a laboratory bench. Securely attached toward one end of, and perpendicular to, the upper surface of the plate is a rod that extends upward about two feet. A clamp can attach a second rod perpendicular to the vertical rod so that the second rod extends parallel to the laboratory bench.
It is to be understood that when a load applied to the second rod is situated farther from the vertical rod, the l
Bentley Ronald L.
Rosenau Bruce R.
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