Patent Application
20200141036
The apparatus disclosed herein relate to a novel and easy to manufacture clamp for clamping thread on a bobbin used for sewing. More specifically, the bobbin storage clamp may be fabricated as a single piece with only a minimal amount of material necessary to fully secure a bobbin regardless of the amount of thread on the bobbin.
Prior art bobbin clamps such as that is in U.S. Design Pat. No. 623,847 were designed for securing multiple bobbins and relied on an unnecessary amount of material to construct.
Likewise, other existing bobbin clamps require excess amount of material to manufacture. For example, the Tulips Bobbin Clamp requires approximately three to four times more material and complexity to manufacture than that of the present invention. This additional material increases the cost of manufacturing as well as increasing the weight of each clamp. Likewise, other existing bobbin clamps such as the Smartneedle bobbin clamp also requires three to approximately three to four times more material and complexity to manufacture.
As such, prior art bobbin clamps due to the excessive material used for the construction are more expensive to manufacture, require more space to store and are more easily damaged due to their complexity.
These and other advantages of the present invention will be clarified in the description of the preferred embodiments taken together with the figures.
An apparatus for clamping and securing thread to a bobbin is disclosed. The invention provides for a bobbin clamp having two clamp ends separated by a minimal distance but not in direct contact. The bobbin clamp includes two ears for separating the clamp ends when pressure is applied to the ears. The bobbin clamp and two ears comprise a single piece construction using minimal materials to create a cost efficient, lightweight, and easy to construct bobbin storage clamp.
Another aspect of the present invention is its simplicity and minimal amount of material needed for manufacturing. For example, for a bobbin of approximately 20 millimeters in overall diameter, a bobbin storage claim in accordance with the present invention only requires a clamp diameter approximately 12-15 millimeters. The overall length of the bobbin storage clamp, including the ears, would be approximately 15-18 millimeters. Additionally, the bobbin storage clamp can be constructed with a thickness of approximately 1 to 3 millimeters with a height that is 50% to 75% of the bobbin height while sufficiently clamping the thread of the bobbin.
While the inventions disclosed herein are susceptible to various modifications and alternative forms, specific embodiments are shown by way of examples in the drawings and described in detail. It should be understood that the figures and detailed description discussed herein are not intended to limit the invention to the particular forms disclosed. On the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope of the present inventions as defined by the appended claims. Although the invention is generally described with respect to a bobbin, the invention may be adapted for use on various types of thread spools to secure the thread wrapped around the spool Description will now be given of the invention with reference to
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Although the size of gap 130 may be described in distance measurements such as millimeters, gap 130 may alternatively be measured and described in angular degrees since the exemplary bobbin storage clamp 100 is circular in nature. As such, gap 130 may be typically described as between 1 and 15 degrees, in view of the entire exemplary circular bobbin storage clamp 100 consisting of 360 degrees.
Turning to
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The exemplary bobbin storage clamp 100 is preferably composed of a semi-rigid plastic. However, the bobbin storage clamp 100 may be fabricated from any material that is capable of maintaining rigidity while allow some flexibility in the material. For example, the bobbin storage clamp 100 may me composed of silicon, hard rubber, or other semi-rigid material.
More specifically, the amount of plastic or other semi-rigid material required to manufacture the exemplary bobbin storage clamp 100 improves significantly over prior bobbin clamps by requiring only a minimal amount of material. Prior art bobbin clamps use nearly 3 to 4 times the amount of material per clamp.
However, in the exemplary embodiment, for a small bobbin of 20 millimeters in diameter, a bobbin storage clamp 100 in accordance with the current invention will have a diameter of approximately only 12-15 millimeters. The overall length of such an exemplary bobbin storage clamp, including the ears, would be approximately 15-18 millimeters. Likewise, for bobbins larger in diameter, a proportional bobbin storage clamp 100, similar in material savings, in accordance with this invention could be used.
Because of the compact size of the exemplary bobbin storage clamp 100, the amount of material used to fabricate the bobbin storage clamp is far less than any existing bobbin storage clamp. For example, for a bobbin storage clamp adapted to fit a 20-millimeter diameter bobbin, a uniform thickness of only 1 to 3 millimeters, preferably 2 millimeters is necessary. On a prior art bobbin, without the advantages of the present invention, the thickness is not uniform, which leads to more difficult fabrication. The thickness may also be nearly 10 millimeters at certain points of the bobbin clamp in the prior.
In addition to the thickness advantages, to fit an exemplary 20-millimeter bobbin, the height of the bobbin storage clamp 100 would not need to be more than 50% to 75% of the height of the bobbin, (e.g. 4-5 millimeters.) This reduction in size and material necessary to manufacture compared to prior art bobbin clamps show the dramatic improvement of the present invention.
Although exemplary embodiments of the present invention have been shown and described, it will be apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art that a number of changes, modifications, or alterations to the invention as described herein may be made, none of which depart from the spirit of the present invention. All such changes, modifications and alterations should therefore be seen as within the scope of the present invention.
