Tent – canopy – umbrella – or cane – Canes – sticks – crutches – and walking aids – Tips
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-06
2001-09-11
Canfield, Robert (Department: 3635)
Tent, canopy, umbrella, or cane
Canes, sticks, crutches, and walking aids
Tips
C135S077000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06286529
ABSTRACT:
PURPOSE OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a shock absorber for crutches. With it, crutches offer the best conditions regarding user's comfort through a damped support on the ground. The device has been conceived and arranged in order to arrive at a considerable reduction in price of the crutch.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Utility model number 9601865, from the same applicant, describes a crutch with which several problems and difficulties are solved. These derive from the frame-work or basic constitution of traditional crutches, whether they are finished off by a cross-piece made to be adapted to the armpit of the user, or they are those where the upper end is finished off by a semi-clamp to be adapted on its side to the arm, close to the user's elbow.
Therefore, in the utility model, the novelty of the crutch is described as being the structure between the traditional cross-piece for the support of the user's hand, and the lower end for the support of the crutch on the ground. The structure is characterized by a telescopic strut, based on two sectors that are axially interconnected. So, the lower sector or span acts as a female element while the upper sector or span acts as a female element while the upper sector or span acts as a male element, with the particularity that between both sectors or spans and internally, a bumper is placed to absorb the effects of the crutch impact on the ground, when walking, and more precisely, the effects that the impact produce on the member which is holding it down and which is transmitting the corporal weight to it.
This solution avoids the typical “shock” at the upper extremities of people using crutches to walk, which “shock” effect can produce pathological irregularities in the individual, such as the so-called “crutch syndrome” and which is characterized by neurological irregularities in the arms, caused by the injury of the brachial plexus when passing through the armpit region.
Logically, structure characteristics of the crutch, which is the object of the utility model 9601865, with regard to its telescopic capability and its bumper device incorporated by the lower strut of the crutch itself avoid or solve the troubles we just have explained.
Trying to improve the features of this kind of crutch, the applicant himself is the holder of utility model 9700973 in which, starting from a configuration similar to the one of the utility model 9601865 previously quoted, it has been foreseen that the damping itself could be controlled as a result of providing a spring capable of being arranged so as to have a larger or smaller degree of extensibility. Also, this damping can be canceled without needing to pull out the spring but rather by changing the position of a pin, which pin not only serves as a fixing part for connecting the two pipes that constitute the lower strut of the crutch, but also makes possible the damping because this pin is placed in a vertically extended window of the lower, internal pipe of the two pipes making up the lower strut of the crutch.
This solution, which is suitable from a functional point of view, represents in any case, an economical problem due to the costs for providing the extended window in the pipe making up the strut.
DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION
The device proposed by the invention, starting from a performing philosophy of the utility model 9700973, solves in a completely satisfactory way, the troubles explained above as it makes unnecessary any kind of machining in the pipe forming the strut.
For this and in a more concrete way, taking into consideration that it is necessary to “fit in” the upper end of that strut a cap provided with an axially upwardly extending rod to guide the spring that supplies the crutch with the bumper effect, this invention is characterized by extending the body of the cap to enable establishment of the elongated window or hole therein to absorb the telescopic motion of the strut against the elastic deformation of the spring, as well as a hole necessary to cancel the bumper effect through a position change of the corresponding pin.
In this way and as it has been said above, the pipe forming the strut does not require any machining, and the part forming the cap, as it has been obtained from plastic material and through injection, has a cost nearly the same, with or without the holes. Therefore, the economic repercussion that the presence of these parts represents, is no more than the necessary material costs for its extension, and this material cost is considerably lower than the former costs of the pipe machining.
REFERENCES:
patent: 26829 (1860-01-01), Bickel
patent: 2690188 (1954-09-01), Goddard
patent: 2802479 (1957-08-01), Hickman
patent: 3158162 (1964-11-01), Reel
patent: 3901258 (1975-08-01), Montgomery
patent: 4881493 (1989-11-01), Martel et al.
patent: 4958651 (1990-09-01), Najm
patent: 6055998 (2000-05-01), Bader
patent: 165751 (1949-09-01), None
patent: 175137 (1917-02-01), None
patent: 0 513 411 (1992-11-01), None
patent: 0 738 837 (1996-10-01), None
patent: 371291 (1907-01-01), None
patent: 141109 (1990-04-01), None
1 sheet having 5 figures from what appears to be a Great Britian Patent of unknown number, Jan. 1912.
Canfield Robert
Wenderoth , Lind & Ponack, L.L.P.
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