Patent Application
20060038318
Necessity is the mother of invention in this case. While working in the artificial nail industry trying to invent and develop safe products, the inventors determined that a nail blank just didn't exist in a manner that would be conducive to the overall goals and ambitions of the inventors. The inventors are driven to create a better artificial fingernail product. With that goal in mind, the idea is to allow users to wear a better artificial nail composed of a strong durable plastic or even a metal nail, or even combinations of a variety of raw materials. There is no nail blank that satisfies the requirements of the invention in the market. Here the inventors had to experiment with a multitude of ideas and concepts to come up with a method and process that would allow a nail blank to be manufactured, which would later allow for a desired nail object to be cut out of the nail blank, where the artificial nail object is the desired result and final product.
The advantage of this invention is that with relative ease and very little effort a nail blank can now be manufactured that would allow the extraction of a unique and desired artificial nail object. This invention has many applications, particularly with fingernail and toenails.
The invention is a method and process to manufacture an artificial nail blank by injecting raw material into a mold. The nail blank may be comprised of plastic, metal or ceramics. An obvious design would permit the manufacture of the blank to accommodate one artificial nail, or any number of digits. The blank may be a solid color or may have multiple colors contained within it. Multi colored blanks may have specialized artistic designs to accommodate a french-nail look where the color is found to imitate the curve a natural nail tip and where the color is consistent throughout the blank. The application of the invention results in a wide scope of possible implementations including a use for creating artificial fingernails and artificial toenails.
At first it is required to determine the raw material to be found within the manufactured nail blank. This may be composed of any color and/or combination of plastic, metal or ceramic. Once this is determined, then a decision about the mold is made regarding the desired number and type of individual nail objects to be cut out of the manufactured nail blank. For example, if the decision is to cut out 5 french nail fingernail objects, then a multi-mold reflecting the five individual objects and the artistic design of a french nail would be utilized. The raw material is then forcefully injected into the mold and shaped to the mold. In cases of multiple injections (like the example above), two molds may be used and a process of heating the first mold results and then injecting the second mold material is performed and the instant the material begins to shape to the second mold, a vice or clamp is applied to create a pressure bond with the first mold results. This invention permits a single nail blank to be created out of any number of colors or compositions of raw material with all the characteristics as if only one injection had occurred of a single material, while at the same time maintaining the desired artistic enhancements, thus permitting the creation of some unique and desirable nail objects.
This invention allows a nail blank to be manufactured out of many different types of raw material including plastics, metals and ceramics. The next stage is to determine the mold to be used. This decision can reflect a manufactured nail blank all of one color and material type as shown in
The mold choice can also lead to a multi-injection process to create the nail blank. Under this choice, two molds may be utilized. Typically, a multi-injection process will be required where some artistic enhancement is desired in the manufactured nail blank. The most common will be the intention to create a french nail look manufactured nail blank, where a curve along the smile line is imitated in the manufactured nail blank. During the multi injection process the first mold 110 is injected with the selected material which may be composed of any of the raw materials. Immediately after the injection and before the first mold 110 results have completely cooled or settled, the second multi injection into the second mold 120 occurs. In order to facilitate bonding between the two raw materials types, the first mold results are heated prior to the injection of the material into the second mold 120. Once the injected material is shaped around the first mold results and the second mold itself, a vice or clamp may be applied to facilitate a pressure bonding. The outcome is a single manufactured nail blank that is fused along the artistic enhanced line so that the manufactured nail blank can be utilized to cut out the eventual artificial nail product.
By completing the steps above, a manufactured nail blank will be achieved. The entire objective of the preferred embodiments of the invention has been to create a simplified method and process to manufacture an artificial nail blank. The application of this invention is extensive and plentiful, as with this invention it will become trivial to manufacture unique and desirable nail blanks quickly and easily. Because of the advantages inherent in this invention it is anticipated that many variants of this invention are possible, which should be included within the preferred embodiments and descriptions of this invention.
