Hand-held condiment grinder

Details Hand-held condiment grinder Hand-held condiment grinder

2002-10-11

2003-05-27

Husar, John M. (Department: 3725)

Solid material comminution or disintegration

Apparatus

Hand support comminutor

C241S169000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06568616

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a hand-held condiment grinder. More particularly, although not exclusively, the invention relates to a hand-held pepper grinder for storing pepper seeds and dispensing pepper grinds upon reciprocal movement of an activation trigger.
A grinder is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,749. The grinder includes a lever
80
having an arm
86
that presses downwardly on a slide member
88
. The slide member
88
passes through a compartment
55
within which the pepper seeds are located and includes a flat serrated face. The serrations co-operate with a flat shearing edge
63
to grind the pepper seeds in the compartment
55
for dispensation of the pepper grinds through the base of the grinder. Only one face of the slide member is serrated and the other faces of the member are wasted in terms of producing any grinding effect. This means that lever
80
must be activated an unnecessarily high number of times to dispense the grinds. Also, the length of the lever
80
with respect to the length of the arm
86
is high meaning that large movements of the lever translate to small movements of the slide member
88
. This is a generally inefficient design.
Various other hand-held condiment grinders are known, but most suffer from similar efficiency constraints.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or substantially ameliorate at least one of the above disadvantages and/or more generally to provide improved hand-held condiment grinder.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
There is disclosed herein a condiment grinder comprising:
a housing,
a chamber within or attached to the housing for containing articles to be ground,
a trigger attached to the housing,
an elongate piston extending through the chamber and having serrations along a portion of its length,
a linkage co-operative with the trigger and the piston to transmit reciprocal movement of the trigger to reciprocal movement of the piston,
a grinding aperture having an internal periphery, the aperture positioned adjacent to the chamber and co-operative throughout its internal periphery with the serrations of the piston to grind the articles upon reciprocation of the piston.
Preferably the piston is substantially cylindrical.
Preferably the serrated portion is substantially cylindrical.
Preferably the aperture is formed between a pair of grinding blocks, each having a concave recess, the recesses facing one another to define said aperture.
Preferably one of the grinding blocks is fixed with respect to the chamber and the other is movable toward or away from the fixed grinding block.
Preferably the grinder includes an adjustment knob co-operative with the movable grinding block.
Preferably the piston fits within a bore of the housing.
Preferably a spring surrounds the piston and extends through the bore, one end of the spring bearing upon a wall of the chamber and the other end of the spring bearing on the piston to bias the piston to a position whereat the linkage moves the trigger to a rest position.
Preferably the linkage includes a first link mounted pivotally to the housing and a second link connected pivotally to be piston.
Preferably the first and second links are hingedly interconnected to one another.
Preferably the trigger makes a sliding contact with the hinged interconnection of the first hand second links.
Preferably the trigger is mounted pivotally to the housing.


REFERENCES:
patent: 2876956 (1959-03-01), Bentley
patent: 4573244 (1986-03-01), Holcomb et al.
patent: 5199655 (1993-04-01), Yang
patent: 5988543 (1999-11-01), Wu

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