Beds – Mattress – Having confined gas
Patent
1997-01-17
1999-12-14
Trettel, Michael F.
Beds
Mattress
Having confined gas
5710, 5722, 5738, 425522, A47C 2710
Patent
active
060000791
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention concerns container elements for a furniture system. The invention further concerns a method of manufacture of such container elements and furniture items including such elements. The invention also concerns a device for adjusting such elements and closing devices for such elements. Finally this application concerns an inflatable mattress.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Upholstery including beds comprise about 40% of the total furniture production for the home market. While another remaining 40-50% of the furniture production has undergone radical change into highly industrialised production during the last three decades, manufacture of upholstery is still directed to handicraft.
Since the end of the 1960s, the cost effective, highly industrialized production of cabinets, cupboards, book shelves, drawers, tables etc. has produced flat packages for assembly in the homes. The volume of this business has increased from 0% at that time to about 33% in 1993. This has brought about correspondingly cost effective distribution. During that time there has been strictly no development in respect of the production of upholstery due to absence of technical solutions. Thus the conditions for manufacture and transport has remained unchanged during the years.
Environmental friendly products and processes is a challenge for all industry as indeed it is for the furniture industry. Traditional manufacture of conventional upholstery and beds is in rough terms a process for fixing together a number of different materials to each other. This principle makes separation of the products, one of the fundamentals in recycling, into different categories of material, after a finished life period, expensive and difficult. It is also clear that it is difficult for the manufacturer to find environment friendly materials with acceptable technical performance at reasonable prices. Due to the complexness of upholstery of today it is believed that recycling thereof will necessitate starting new specialised plants for recycling. This will further increase the costs for upholstery. As an example it can be mentioned that the cost for separating one single conventional spring mattress is calculated to be a very high amount in the order of around 60 US dollars (as of May, 1995) which of course will be added to the consumer price.
Another problem with upholstery is the substantial weight and volume of the products which makes storage and transport costly and energy consuming.
Other problems are related to beds. In order to buy a bed, a customer is expected to make a decisive choice of the bed firmness/softness after only a few minutes testing. It is well known that many customers regret their choice which, at best, leads to costly and laborious transports for replacement. Conventional mattresses are of course not possible to adapt to altered demands with respect to softness. Another problem connected to beds is allergy caused by dust, pollen and mite, because the difficulty of cleaning conventional beds.
Altogether conventional upholstery is subject to high costs for manufacture, transport and storage and will be subject to increasing costs in the near future due to the responsibility of the manufacturer to assure that the demands for recycling materials and energy, the environment friendliness of all materials in a product as well as energy saving distribution are fulfilled.
Furniture items with pneumatic support structures are well known. Such furniture items are advantageous, since they are transportable in a highly compressed state which facilitate export as well as distribution via mail order. Further features are low weight and low price.
SE-B-368 502 (Dranger and Huldt) describes a body support device with so called spare elements which are intended to be inflated with air, gas or to be filled with water prior to their insertion into a shape defining cover. The elements are intended to be manufactured from e.g. polyvinylchloride and preferably in a seam welding process. This know device, however, compr
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