Road structure – process – or apparatus – Apparatus – Material distribution means
Patent
1990-11-26
1992-01-21
Britts, Ramon S.
Road structure, process, or apparatus
Apparatus
Material distribution means
404112, 404101, E01B 1928, E01B 1922
Patent
active
050823957
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to an arrangement in a motor-driven roller operative to be driven in two directions, with a yoke or the like for guiding the direction of movement of the roller.
Motor-driven rollers are previously known in this art. One such prior-art model carries a driver who rides on the roller to steer it. Such rollers give rise to large spot loads and are unsuitable for use on certain types of surfaces, for example on drenched or newly-thawed football pitches. Manually advanced rollers and motor-driven rollers which are manually steered but do not carry a person for steering are employed in the rolling of certain types of surfaces, for example gravel tennis courts, the rolling operation being here performed a very large number of times, for example as many as 30-40 passes. A roller has a very limited operative surface. Consequently, it takes an extremely long time to roll a whole tennis court. Irrespective of whether a motor-driven roller with a pedestrian operator is employed, or whether a roller is pulled manually, one person will be, therefore, constantly occupied in steering the motor-driven roller or in pulling and steering a manual roller. Since such work is boring, calls for considerable exertion and takes a long time--thereby being expensive to carry out--there are difficulties at present in getting such work completed.
The object of the present invention is to propose an arrangement in a motor-driven roller, the arrangement greatly reducing or wholly eliminating at relatively low cost the need of uninterrupted manual steering of the roller.
In the type of roller mentioned by way of introduction, the present invention is characterized by a steering device disposed on a yoke or the like and operative continually to steer the direction of movement of the roller; that this steering device is located ahead of the roller, seen in the direction of movement of the roller; and that the steering device for the roller is in its turn disposed to be steered by a continually operating steering arrangement so as constantly to determine the direction of movement of the roller and, at the end of the desired pass in one direction of movement, to switch the driving direction of the motor, the steering arrangement being switchably disposed in relation to that surface which is intended to be rolled by means of the motor-driven roller.
The nature of the present invention and its aspects will be more readily understood from the following brief description of the accompanying Drawings, and discussion relating thereto.
In the accompanying Drawings:
FIG. 1 shows an outdoor tennis court with a so-called gravel surface, in which one embodiment of the present invention is shown in action; and
FIG. 2 shows part of a further embodiment of the present invention used on a tennis court with a gravel surface. The same reference numerals have been used on the Drawings for essentially identical details.
Referring to the Drawings, a tennis court surface 6 according to FIGS. 1 and 2 includes a large number of layers of different compositions in the form of gravel, shingle, sand, crushed brick etc. above a drainage system. In order to make the surface playable, compaction of these layers is necessary, since rain water rapidly penetrates through the layers to the drainage system and the water, on its permeation, loosens the layers of the surface. As a rule, such compaction is effected today in that a person manually pulls a roller back and forth across the court a large number of times, for example between 30 and 40 passes, substantially in the same path. Thereafter, the roller is displaced laterally roughly three-quarters of the width of the roller, the roller is then pulled between 30 and 40 passes, and so on, until the entire court has been rolled. It will be readily appreciated that it is an extremely time-consuming and sole-destroying job to roll a complete tennis court. Moreover, complete re-rolling must be carried out after each occasion of rainfall and, after every match, both sweeping and rolling of the court
REFERENCES:
patent: 3599543 (1971-08-01), Kerridge
patent: 3949035 (1976-07-01), Silbernager
patent: 3964834 (1976-06-01), Paramythioti et al.
patent: 4142815 (1979-03-01), Mitchell
patent: 4209988 (1980-01-01), Langworthy et al.
Britts Ramon S.
Connolly Nancy P.
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