Patent Application
20170183196
Users of electronic devices often find that the cables used with them get tangled, whether they are power, audio or data cables, which is compounded when unspooled cable is gathered for transport and mixed with other cables. Tangled cables can lead to knotting and kinking, are less usable in deployment, and can be frustrating and time-consuming to untangle. Untangling can lead to strain on cables that can wear out the cable jacketing and damage the operational portion of the cable.
Cable spools exist for spooling cables in a compact, organized fashion to keep them from tangling and make them easy for transport. Spools have a long history in storing and maintaining long lengths of thread, rope and chain in an organized manner from which they can be unspooled to great lengths without risk of tangling. As an added benefit, some cable spools have been fashioned to transport power adaptors for electronic devices along with the cables used with them to keep them together and organized.
The rise and growth of use of portable electronic devices such as cellular phones, smartphones, audio playback devices, tablets, laptops and other portable computing devices has made cable management an important and ongoing issue in the daily lives of many people. Industrial use of portable electronic devices such as surveying equipment, GPS devices, audio, video and photographic equipment used in film, television, print and web production, and environmental testing equipment also experiences the same issues. People that frequently travel, or transport electronic devices between home and work, or between office and field work, necessarily transport many cables for their various electronic devices and would benefit from portable cable organizational spooling devices, especially so if they also work to organize and retain power adaptors or the principal devices the cables are used with.
Spools provide means for spooling and organizing lengths of cable for storage and transport. Circular spools of ample diameter for the cable used provide superior means for spooling cable as they fully support a cable being wound around them and prevent the sharp bending of cable that would occur around corners of other spool fashions that can cause kinking and damage to the cable, especially after repeated cycles of winding and unwinding. They are preferable to spooling a cable around a small diameter post or a spooling portion with corners, whether they have a radius or not, or wrapping a cable around a flat plate, all of which cause a cable to bend too tightly for its cross-sectional composition and diameter that determines the limit of its flexibility and the point where a cable may kink, strained, or otherwise be damaged. Wrapping a cord around a flat plate causes kinking of the cable wrapped around them, and spooling around a spool with corners or small radii causes stress and strain to the cable and cable jacketing, both variations causing concentrated forces on points of the cable that eventually leads to wear and tear that will shorten the aesthetic and functional life of the cable.
Commercially available cable spools such as those offered by Cable Turtle (NL1003471), and XL have circular, but relatively small diameter spooling posts relative to the cords advertised for use with them. The tight wrapping of cords around a narrow spool post may cause kinking and strain on a cord and its jacket. These spools also feature flexible cable retention features (‘lips’) that the cord is conceivably wound into and out of; Though the Cable Turtle is designed with a flexible housing to flex open to deploy cable, in practice use users often pull a cord out of the lips that retain it during unspooling. These retention features introduce friction to the cord during spooling and unspooling that will cause stress to the jacketing, eventually leading to it wearing out and exposing cables within and lead to a shortened useable life of the cable.
Cable spools such as those offered by Nice and Quirky provide a recess to store a power adaptor at a portion of their cable spools. As power adaptors, such as those offered by Apple Inc. for their iPhone and MacBook products, are generally squarish blocks the recesses provided for them by these examples are also square shaped to fit them. Likewise, since the material of those spools comprises both the perimeter of the recess and that of the spooling portion, the spooling surface is not circular but a squarish shape derived from the shape of the power adaptor device. As indicated, this is undesirable due to the stresses these corners can impose on a cord wrapped around them. As a cable is wrapped around these square or square-like spooling surfaces, the cable is compressed around tight corners of the spool, even if they have radii, which can cause kinking, strain and damage to the cable.
The invention is a round cable spool with a circular internal perimeter disposed to retain a power adaptor by friction fitting within the circular internal perimeter the nominally square or rectangular adaptor at the distal portions of the adaptor, generally its corners, whether they are sharp or have radii. Therefore a square adaptor would be retained within a circular internal perimeter in the cable spool with its four corners making physical contact with the material of the internal perimeter of the spool.
This invention discloses an internal perimeter of a cable spool circular in shape to maintain even spooling of cable over a nominally diametrical spooling surface to fully support a cable as it is layered around the spool during spooling, where a circular interior perimeter of the spool is designed to fit a specific adaptor, by inserting the squarish adaptor within the internal perimeter of the spool where it is retained by friction or pressure fit at the corners or distal portions of the adapter at the surface of the circular internal perimeter. This is in contrast to cable spools that have recesses shaped to fit the shape of a square or rectangular adaptor.
As the internal perimeter is round, the spooling surface is also round. As adaptors are typically large in size relative to the diameter of a cable associated with it, the spooling surfaces of specific spools disposed around the adaptor are by design generally larger than the minimum required bend radius for the cable. Circular spools with large diameters relative to cable diameter provide the added benefit in lessening the impact of spooling on a cable and prevent sharp bending or kinking of a cable during spooling. The cable spool generally has sidewalls that extend distally from the spooling surface to retain the cable within during spooling.
Embodiments are intended to store a power adaptor within an internal perimeter of a cable spool that is also intended to store the cable or cables associated with the adaptor, whether they are fixed to the adaptor or removable, thus keeping the cable and adaptor together in an organized fashion. This is particularly advantageous for cables and adaptors for portable devices, allowing for compact portability and organization of an adaptor and its associated cable or cables together.
The circular interior perimeter of the spool also has the aesthetic advantage of appearing simple and uncomplicated, and can be used without an adaptor without appearing unused. The relatively large void delineated by the circular interior perimeter also appears to lessen to physical presence of a cable spool, despite embodiments having a large diameter, and the void presents opportunity for fingers to grip the spool therein, making handling of the spool easier.
When a spool is part of a family of spools wherein each are designed to fit different adaptors, the family collection has the aesthetic advantage of appearing of the same general design without obvious variations of the central interior perimeter. Each would have the same basic design of a circular central perimeter, regardless of the actual shape or size of the adaptor each was designed to retain.
The invention is generally to be made from hard or elastomeric injection molded plastics or silicones. Elastomers, like silicone, provide an advantage over hard plastics or other hard materials in that the internal perimeter diameter can be made slightly smaller than a diameter required to exactly fit the corners (or distal portions) of the adaptor so that the adaptor compresses the elastomeric material during insertion to allow better retention through compression. This also provides greater allowances for tolerance in the dimensions of the cable spool and the adaptor. Elastomers also allow other features to be more easily molded, such as flexible portions intended to allow entry of a cable and retaining them therein. Elastomers, especially silicones, generally have excellent dielectric properties. Silicone, in particular, is advantageous in that it is generally heat and fire resistant (having high temperature ratings), which is suitable for use with electrical equipment in unpredictable environments, and also has low compression set properties unlike most thermoplastic elastomers.
In order to make the internal perimeter of the invention nominally coincident to the distal portions of the adaptor, a cable organizer is designed to specifically fit a specific adaptor's dimensions, correlating the distal portions of the adaptor to be nominally coincident to the interior perimeter of the cable spool upon insertion. While at first evaluation this may seem limiting to use, the portable electronic device market has massive quantities of devices and their associated adaptors in use from companies such as Apple Inc., Samsung, and Blackberry, for example. A cable spool designed to retain an iPhone adaptor, or iPad adaptor, for example, has significant marketability and appeals directly to the users of those devices. As the invention can be designed to accommodate specific power adaptors, then a different and specific cable spool is required for a user's different devices, broadening the market penetration of the invention.
Where a power adaptor is smaller than the diameter of a spool's internal perimeter, it may be loosely placed inside the internal perimeter during storage. If the power adaptor also has a cable wound around the spool, then the adaptor is effectively, if loosely supported by the spool.
In one embodiment, a power adaptor will feature conductive tangs (also known as pins, or blades) extending from the body of the adaptor, conventionally referred to as the ‘plug’ end. With these adaptor types, the invention can be designed such that the friction fit of the adaptor to the interior perimeter can be made at the distal portions of the body of the adaptor at one end, and the distal portions of the tangs at the other. Another embodiment may have a slot or holes to receive the tangs of an adaptor.
In another embodiment, the tangs of an adaptor can be fitted around portions of the cable spool during insertion, straddling the sidewalls or a retention tab, for example. The sidewalls of the cable organizer can be designed to fit between the tangs of the adaptor upon insertion of the adaptor. The width of the cable spool retained between the tangs must be equal or less than the available width between the tangs. In example, an adaptor may have NEMA 1-15 ungrounded (Type A) styled tangs extending from its body, which measure approximately 7/16″ (approximately 11 mm) between tangs: thus the width of the cable spool retained between the tangs must be this dimension, or less. In effect, the adaptor is fixed to the cable spool at the tangs.
In order to make the cable spool more compact, however, the diameter of the internal perimeter can be smaller than the overall length of the adaptor with its tangs; this also allows the body of the adaptor to be friction fitted to the interior perimeter regardless of the tangs. In embodiments of the invention where the tangs are parallel to a central axis of the spool, the spool may be retained to the adaptor when it is inserted into a power socket, such as a wall socket. While the spool may be more compact, the assembly of the spool with the adaptor would generally have an overall greater thickness than the next described embodiment, considering the tangs protruding from the spool, and therefore less easy to insert into a pocket or sleeve in pants, jacket, bag or briefcase.
Therefore, preferred embodiments are designed to permit the tangs oriented perpendicular to the main axis of the spool where they may straddle portions of the spool such as the sidewalls in order to keep the entire assembly as compact as possible in order to facilitate storing the device in places as described where available space is restricted. Likewise, preferred embodiments orient the wider portions of an adaptor parallel to the wider portion of the spool to make the assembly as flat as possible, rather than orienting them perpendicular to each other which would make the assembly redundantly large in multiple dimensions.
In some embodiments, where the thickness of the spool approximates but is less than the dimension between the tangs, the insertion of the tangs around the spool will require a certain amount of non-destructive flexibility of the tangs and spool in order to fit during insertion. Forcing the assembly, however, may present opportunity to damage either the tangs, adaptor or spool. Therefore, a relief slot, or slots, in the interior perimeter or sidewall of the invention may be disposed to provide ease of insertion of the tangs around the spool at the interior perimeter by effectively reducing the thickness there, reducing or eliminating strain on the tangs or spool. Once inserted, the adaptor can be rotated within the internal perimeter to a point where the tangs are no longer at the position of the relief slot, thereby constraining the assembly that physically retains the adaptor against knock-out. This is especially helpful while transporting adaptors for portable devices, which can be dropped, or jostled, however they may be transported. In order to release the adaptor, it is rotated to the position where the tangs are at the relief slot, and then the adaptor is levered out of the opening at the internal perimeter. Generally, however, rotating the adaptor to a secondary retention position is an added benefit and not always required.
Some power adaptors feature fully or partially retractable plugs, which present no or less issue with interference with the body of the cable spool. Where a cable spool is thicker than the distance between tangs of a power adaptor that protrude from the adaptor, portions of the tangs that extend distally from the adaptor can be accommodated by making a notch or notches at, or making a radius or radii at the edges of the interior perimeter to allow the tangs to fit thereat without interference.
Embodiments may feature slots, slits or holes in the sidewalls, the interior perimeter or other portions of the spool to provide means to pass a cable through and hooking the cable into place either prior or after spooling. Likewise, embodiments may feature flanges to retain cables or plugs around the perimeter of the spool. Some embodiments may feature discreet flanges around a perimeter of a spool's distal sidewall to retain a portion of the cable without necessitating passing the cable into or out of a retention flange imposing friction on a cable that surrounds the entire circumference of the spool, which, as disclosed herein, would cause undo strain to the jacketing of a cable.
Relief slots in the sidewalls may also be used to insert or exit an end of a cable into or from a cable spool. As a cable is spooled or unspooled on a cable spool, it may be hooked at a selected unspooled cable length into a slot. Employing a number of slots permits a greater selection of cable lengths left unspooled for deployment in use or storage, however a circular array of three slots on a sidewall is generally sufficient to prevent redundancy and lessening the integrity of the sidewall. Elastomeric materials benefit the design by permitting the use of a flexible portion of the material at a slit in a sidewall to retain the cable within the slot, the entranceway to the slot being a slit narrower than the cable but, being flexible, the material of the sidewall can be flexed open at the slit to allow entry of the cable therein to the slot.
A portion of the spool around a cable slot also benefits inserting and retaining a cable by having a narrowing of the material of the spool closer to the slot so that the cable requires less bending to enter or exit the slot, the thinness of the there material around the slot also making the portion more flexible to accommodate pressures influenced on it by the cable.
Embodiments may feature cord-plug retention means that are in-line with the manner of spooling, retaining the plug-end of a cord between the sidewalls of a spool to prevent a plug-end from extending distally or laterally from a sidewall of the spool that would be anaesthetic and difficult to stop compactly.
An interior portion of the cable spool between the sidewalls may have a portion defined by flanges extending from or a slot within a sidewall to retain a plug-end of a cable therein to hold the cable prior to spooling so that the cable is gripped to prevent the plug-end from just spinning around and preventing spooling during the act of moving the cable around the spool.
In some embodiments, a flange or flanges extends interiorly from a sidewall or sidewalls of a cable spool so that a cord can be inserted between the flanges and its plug-end is drawn toward the flanges where it becomes fixed in place prior to spooling. This allows one hand to hold the spool, the other to draw and spool the cable, while the retention flanges holds the cable.
Likewise, in other embodiments, a recess is disposed to receive a plug that can be pushed into the recess by hand or with another device, such as using an opposing plug-end of a cable to push the other plug-end into the recess. In yet another embodiment, a slot in a portion of the interior perimeter allows a plug-end to be inserted and retained prior to the cable being spooled around. The benefit of each of these three variants over hooking the cable through a slot in a sidewall is that the retained plug-end doesn't extend beyond any perimeter of the spool that would make it thicker, being aesthetically unappealing or more difficult to insert into a compact space for storage.
Embodiments may feature plug retention means at a distal perimeter of a spool between sidewalls of the spool. Once the cable is nominally spooled within the sidewalls of the cable spool, a distal plug-end may be inserted between the sidewalls to retain it by friction or pressure fit. An added lip or flange at an interior portion of the sidewall, such as around the interior portion of the distal perimeter of the sidewall, may be disposed to retain the thick plug-end, such as a USB plug, without obstructing the spooling of a thinner cable around the spool, as the plug-end is larger than the cable and the lip or flange is intended only to hold the plug by retention or friction and not to obstruct the movement of the cable.
In those embodiments where both plug-ends are fastened to a spool between the sidewalls of the spool, then the complete assembly of the cable and spool is considered to be flat and compact and easier to store in compact, narrow spaces such as pockets or sleeves. In such embodiments, where both plug-ends of a cable are connected to a spool by features between the sidewalls, holes or slots for hooking and retaining cable is unnecessary.
An embodiment features a recess in a sidewall of a cable spool disposed to receive a Lightning™ plug of an Apple Inc. cable. The Lightning™ plug is placed adjacent to the slot and, with the USB plug at the other end of the cable, the Lightning™ plug is pushed into the slot, deforming the elastomeric material of the spool until it pops into the slot, where it is considered retained in place. By having one plug-end of a cable retained, the hands are free to hold and spool the remaining cable around the spool. Once the plug is retained therein, the cable may be spooled around the spool, spooling over the recessed Lightning™ plug to spool in a smooth and seamless fashion, preventing any significant bulging of the cable or deformation of the cable during spooling. The cable is then spooled until fully encompassed by the spool, and the distal USB plug-end is inserted between the sidewalls in a friction fit to retain it in a compact manner.
It is plausible that a power adaptor could be held at two points within the internal perimeter, but is better held by at least three points and better still at four.
The cable spool may be integrated within other products, such as a blender, lamp or other household appliance, GPS device, battery, or other portable or fixed devices, to comprise a discreet or integral component of the assembly.
The term cable as used herein is synonymous with wire, cord and the like. The term cable spool is synonymous with cable organizer and the like. The term power adaptor is synonymous with power block, power device, charger and the like, and may be substituted by any object if purpose dictates usefulness. The terms slot and hole may be used interchangeably. The term radius may be substituted by the terms notch or chamfer. The term Figure may alternatively be termed FIG.
These and other features will become more apparent from the following description in which reference is made to the appended drawings, the drawings are for the purpose of illustration only and are not intended to be in any way limiting, wherein:
The following terms are referenced in the drawings and written application:
30 cable spool
32 adaptor
34 interior perimeter
35 distal portions
38 spooling surface
40 gap
42 sidewalls
43 distal perimeter
44 slot
46 tang
48 radius
50 slit
52 thin flexible edge
54 plug retention flange
56 plug retainer
58 interior perimeter slot
60 cable
62 proximal plug
64 distal plug
A cable spool generally identified by reference numeral 30, will now be described with reference to
A cable spool 30, as depicted in
Preferred embodiments have sidewalls 42 that are nominally parallel to each other to maintain a flat, compact design. Preferred embodiments also feature a radius 48 between the interior perimeter 34 and a sidewall 42 for aesthetic and functional purposes described in the ‘operation’ section of this application.
Some embodiments also feature a slit 50 in sidewall 42 providing access of a cable (not shown) to a position within a slot 44, the material of sidewall 42 being elastomeric so as to deform at slit 50 to allow access of the cable therethrough, where it is considered fixedly retained therein slot 44. Multiple slits 50 and slots 44 may feature on the spool 30.
Though embodiments feature parallel sidewalls 42, radii 48, a slot 44 and slit 50, these features may be absent or modified in form in some alternative embodiments. Embodiments with slots feature a circular array of three slots 44 and slits 50 on a sidewall 42 of a spool 30 in preferred embodiments for aesthetic reasons and for the purpose of choosing a specific length of cable to be retained exteriorly of the cable spool 30. Three slots 44 and slits 50 provides ample variation of cable length selection without being overly redundant in number of slots 44 and slits 50.
In this patent document, the word “comprising” is used in its non-limiting sense to mean that items following the word are included, but items not specifically mentioned are not excluded. A reference to an element by the indefinite article “a” does not exclude the possibility that more than one of the element is present, unless the context clearly requires that there be one and only one of the elements.
The scope of the claims should not be limited by the illustrated embodiments set forth as examples, but should be given the broadest interpretation consistent with a purposive construction of the claims in view of the description as a whole.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2916270 | Dec 2015 | CA | national |
