Patent Application
20140037885
This invention relates generally to carpet tiles and other textile face modular flooring and to methods of designing modular flooring having striped patterns and installations of such flooring that mimics the appearance of broadloom carpet.
In part for ease of installation, modular carpet has traditionally been installed in aligned rows and columns of square modules or “tiles,” with the edges of each tile aligned with the edges of adjacent tiles (“conventional carpet tile installation method”). Conventional carpet tile has also historically been a product that sought to mimic the appearance of seamless broadloom carpet and to hide or at least de-emphasize the fact that the product was modular. See, for instance, U.S. Pat. No. 6,908,656, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
Textile face modular flooring designers have sometimes designed flooring and flooring installations that do not seek to mask, but rather emphasize, the modularity of the flooring. For instance, modules can be installed “quarter-turned” with each tile position rotated 90° relative to each adjacent tile. In other instances, module edges are emphasized to achieve an installation appearance similar to that of ceramic tile separated by grout.
There continues, however, to be substantial demand for flooring designs that do not visually emphasize the modularity of flooring components and instead appear to have a design that spans the entire flooring installation or part of the flooring installation rather than appearing to be confined to individual modules.
There likewise is continuing demand for carpet tiles capable of installation in ways that present new visual designs and patterns.
Carpet tile and other textile face modular flooring has to be highly uniform in size and shape and has to have edge structures that present a uniform floor covering when edges of adjacent tiles are abutting. These requirements typically make it a practical necessity for such products to be produced by forming a web of material that is at least somewhat wider than the width of one flooring module, and preferably a bit wider than some multiple of modules, and then cutting modules from that web. For instance, carpet tiles are typically produced by manufacturing a web a bit more than six feet wide and then cutting from it tiles that are eighteen inches square, or by manufacturing a web a bit more than two meters wide and then cutting from it tiles that are one-half meter square. In each case, four tiles can be obtained across the web. While it is relatively easy to cut modules from such a web that have a desired size with a high level of accuracy, it is difficult to position the longitudinal cuts or module separation lines accurately with respect to predetermined positions on the web. It is likewise difficult to position the transverse cuts or separation lines accurately with respect to predetermined positions on the web, at least without substantial material waste.
Some design types present particular problems for use on modular flooring. One such difficult design type is parallel stripes. (As used in this application and patent, “stripes” are visibly different regions of the flooring face having portions of relatively uniform width that typically are significantly longer than wide.) To ensure a fluid appearance in a flooring installation, the tiles cut from a web having uninterrupted stripes extending along its length obviously must be oriented so that all of the stripes of the tiles are oriented in the same direction. However, this alone will not achieve an aesthetically desirable installation appearance.
First, attention has to be paid to the appearance at the places where side-by-side tiles are abutting in an installation so that there is not an out-of-place or odd appearing stripe at that location. Additionally, attention may be drawn to the place where top-to-bottom tile abutment occurs, i.e., where the ends of stripes on one tile meet the ends of stripes on another tile.
One could imagine a design having uniform-width, parallel stripes that fall in precisely the same locations on each tile. It would then be possible to position such tiles in the same orientation on a floor to produce a uniform pattern of uninterrupted, uniform, parallel stripes across a room. Such carpet tiles would be very difficult to produce, however, using conventional production techniques where a carpet web is produced and then cut into tiles, because it is difficult to achieve identical tiles.
One reason for this is that it is difficult to locate the cuts that separate the web into tiles precisely in predetermined locations. This will result in different width stripes at tiles edges (where the stripes are of uniform width on the carpet web). Additionally, unless tiles are positioned so that the stripes on one tile are precisely aligned with the stripes on an adjacent tile, the appearance of continuous stripes on the web will not be reproduced on the floor. Such precise alignment is difficult to do unless the tiles are reassembled exactly as they came from the web. It is unlikely that stripes will align from one tile to the next because, among other reasons, of variation in the location of longitudinal cuts on the web. Imprecise cutting can result in stripes of a tile appearing offset from stripes of adjacent tiles, thereby betraying seams and ruining the appearance of continuous stripes in the flooring installation. Additionally, as noted above, the position of the longitudinal cuts relative to the stripes into which or next to which they fall can create a stripe that appears to be wider or narrower than those in the design (except, of course, where the modules are assembled on the floor in the same side-by-side location they had in the web and the split stripe is re-assembled). Given the necessity but difficulty of attaining cutting precision with conventional striped designs, flexibility in placement of the tiles having a conventional striped pattern of equal-width, continuous stripes is severely limited.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,297,385 (incorporated in its entirety herein by this reference) addressed the need for modular flooring design and production techniques that enable the creation of flooring designs having parallel stripes notwithstanding the above-described and other constraints of conventional modular carpet construction and installation. It did so by providing a broadloom carpet web and a method of forming a carpet web having a striped pattern and color scheme that permits carpet tiles cut from the web to be installed without regard to relative tile positions and without visibly disrupting the pattern, but rather maintaining the appearance of a broadloom web. This was accomplished, in part, by introducing in the web design, and therefore in some of the tiles cut from the web, “longitudinal discontinuities” that mask or take attention away from longitudinal discontinuities that typically occur at top-to-bottom tile interfaces. (“Longitudinal discontinuities” are places in the flooring where one or more stripes or other visible elements of the flooring end and other stripes extending in the same direction or other visible elements begin.) The U.S. Pat. No. 7,297,385 patent techniques produce attractive, distinctive carpet tile installations that exhibit prominently numerous longitudinal discontinuities.
The terms “invention,” “the invention,” “this invention” and “the present invention” used in this patent are intended to refer broadly to all of the subject matter of this patent and the patent claims below. Statements containing these terms should be understood not to limit the subject matter described herein or to limit the meaning or scope of the patent claims below. Embodiments of the invention covered by this patent are defined by the claims below, not this summary. This summary is a high-level overview of various aspects of the invention and introduces some of the concepts that are further described in the Detailed Description section below. This summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used in isolation to determine the scope of the claimed subject matter. The subject matter should be understood by reference to appropriate portions of the entire specification of this patent, any or all drawings and each claim.
The broadloom-like appearance of installations of the flooring of this invention is achieved by producing carpet modules in certain sizes and or proportions (as further described below) from a carpet web in which multiple yarn heights, types, colors or other properties produce narrow stripes or rows of yarn that differ in a random-looking way in color, yarn type, height, width or length or a combination of some or all of those or other attributes.
Optionally, the web may have variations in “background” and “foreground” yarn color, height and pile (e.g., loop or cut pile) according to a separate patchy, cloud-like or organic-looking pattern or other patterns. After the web is manufactured and backing is applied, it is cut into rectangular modules or “planks” typically (but not necessarily) approximately one-fourth meter wide and one meter long (or approximately one-fourth yard wide and one yard long), and the carpet modules are installed, usually aligned longitudinally but staggered laterally.
Modular carpet installations aligned in one direction (e.g., up and down the floor) and staggered at right angles to that first direction (e.g., laterally) may be referred to as “ashlar” installations. Installations aligned across a floor and staggered up and down are sometimes also referred to as “ashlar” installations and other times are referred to as “brick” or “brick ashlar” installations. “Ashlar” as used in this application and patent means modules installed aligned in a first direction and staggered in a second direction perpendicular to the first direction.
The absence of lateral alignment in modular flooring installations of this invention means that longitudinal visual discontinuities in the installation will be relatively narrow and unobtrusive. Significantly, the visual discontinuities for rectangular carpet modules of the above-described dimensions will be, at most, only one-half as wide as would be the case with conventional square tiles because the modules are only half as wide. The modest width of visual discontinuities helps to mask the fact that the flooring is modular. Furthermore, while these rectangular carpet modules will have twice as much length of longitudinal “seams” where two modules abut side to side as compared to square carpet tiles one-half as long as these rectangular modules, the same installation of rectangular carpet modules will have about one-half as much length of perpendicular (end to end) “seams” where two modules abut end to end. The combination of shorter and fewer end to end seams facilitates creation of broadloom-like appearance in flooring installations of the rectangular modules of this invention. This benefit would be even greater if the rectangular modules are made longer and if they are made narrower or both. Thus, the modules could be as little as about 2 to 1 length to width and as great as about 10 to 1 length to width, but there are practical limits on length and width of modules, which limits may be different in different situations depending on such variables as manufacturing technique, installation conditions, room size and many other variables.
In many fields of human endeavor scale is not particularly important because, among other possibilities, changes in scale will not change function. There are, on the other hand, numerous situations where scale is significant. In some instances, human scale matters very much. Human vision is limited by the characteristics of the human eye and brain. Close objects can be too small for a human to see without magnification, just as larger objects may be too distant for humans to see without magnification. Another example also has to do with vision. Humans can see certain wavelengths of light but not all wavelengths and not as broad a range of wavelengths as some animals.
Most floorcoverings are seen by humans from at a range of distances beginning at about four feet, the typical minimum distance of adult human eyes above the floor of a standing person looking down at a floor. Interior building spaces are almost all designed to “human scale” with similar size rooms, similar width corridors and the like. Even in relatively uncommon interior spaces that are dramatically larger than typical spaces, the heights of humans and the constraints of their visual abilities cause them to see clearly about the same quantities of floor space from about the same distances and with about the same visual acuity.
Similarly, “carpet scale” constraints are associated with carpet and carpet tile textile floorcoverings. While versatile, commercially practical weaving and tufting techniques all utilize closely similar materials (mostly nylon fiber on carpet faces), the same relatively small range of sizes of fibers and yarns, the same small range of lengths of yarns protruding on the carpet face, the same small range of densities of yarns and the essentially the same palate of colors.
Carpet can be produced in very large sizes and much smaller sizes and has been so produced. Carpet tiles have long been produced in square sizes, but only sizes ranging between about one foot square up to one yard or one meter square (i.e., in a ratio of side lengths of 1:1) are commercially practical and desirable. Carpet tiles have previously been produced in rectangles such as ½ meter by 1 meter or 18 inches by 36 inches (i.e., in a ratio of side lengths of 2:1). The inventor of this patent has discovered that smaller, proportionately narrower rectangles of carpet tile—on the order of about ¼ meter (25 centimeters) by about 1 meter (100 centimeters) (or about 9 inches by about 36 inches) (i.e., in a ratio of side lengths of 1:4) and with appropriate face yarns and patterns—enable:
These capabilities utilizing carpet “planks” about ¼ meter by about 1 meter seem to function as they do because of, and to reflect, human scale, carpet scale and visual diversity considerations.
One aspect of the greater visual diversity and better seam-hiding that can be achieved with carpet planks of this size can be understood by imagining a typical human-scale floor that is five meters by five meters square (around 16 feet by 16 feet square). Such a floor is fully covered by 10×10=100 one-half meter square tiles with 9×5=45 meters of seams running in each of the up and down and across directions. By contrast, such a floor is fully covered by 20×5=100 one-fourth meter by one meter plank-shaped tiles, with only 3×5=15 meters of across the web seams. Thus, with the planks, there is only one third as much cross-web seam to hide. This facilitates achieving a continuous appearance using certain stripe patterns in installations of closely similar tiles.
Such carpet planks are very versatile in other installation patterns using planks that are not all alike, and that are not necessarily installed with staggered plank ends, including installations of planks having different colors, different tufting patterns, different yarns, different yarn heights and other differences in appearance. Such planks can also be used with tiles of different sizes and shapes, including, for instance, tiles that are one-fourth meter square.
Now consider a commercial space corridor about two meters wide. With one-half meter square tiles, only 4 tiles can be positioned across the width of the corridor. By contrast, with one-fourth meter by one meter tiles positioned longitudinally, 8 tiles can be positioned across the width of the corridor facilitating dramatically different corridor floor patterns.
As yet another example, herringbone patterns of one-fourth meter by one meter planks (side ration of 1:4) are dramatically different in appearance from herringbone patterns of one-half meter by one meter or one meter by two meter tiles (side ration of 1:2) because of human scale and carpet scale considerations as well as the difference in the ratio of side lengths.
This patent or application file contains at least one color photograph. Copies of this patent or patent application publication with color photograph(s) will be provided by the Office upon request and payment of the necessary fee.
Illustrative embodiments of the present invention are described in detail below with reference to the following drawing figures:
The subject matter of embodiments of the present invention is described here with specificity to meet statutory requirements, but this description is not necessarily intended to limit the scope of the claims. The claimed subject matter may be embodied in other ways, may include different elements or steps, and may be used in conjunction with other existing or future technologies. This description should not be interpreted as implying any particular order or arrangement among or between various steps or elements except when the order of individual steps or arrangement of elements is explicitly described.
The broadloom-like appearance of installations of the flooring of this invention, such as installation 10, is achieved by producing carpet modules having at least two characteristics and installing them in an arrangement that facilitates a continuous appearance. This can often be achieved with an ashlar or similar arrangement with staggered shorter edges, but other arrangements will be acceptable in some instances. First, a carpet web from which the modules will be produced having narrow stripes or striations 15, preferably in a random-looking pattern. An example of a random-looking pattern 14 having stripes or striations 15 may be seen in
The appearance of an installation of such modules 12 can be further enhanced by incorporating patchy, cloud-like or organic-looking elements in the pattern, such as elements 17, 19 and 21 in pattern 14 in
The stripes or striations 15 significantly reduce the prominence of the longer module 12 edges 23 (See
Because wider stripes 34 sometimes appear where stripes on side-to-side abutting square modules 30 “combine” in the assembly, but only at places where tiles abut, such wider stripes 34 are visually prominent, as is clear in
Focusing again on
In the case of a rectangular module four times as long as it is wide (like modules 12 in
In order to further illustrate the benefit of staggered installation of the modules 12,
A carpet web usable to make the carpet planks or modules of this invention may be tufted using conventional or computer controlled tufting machines able to produce patterns containing the stripes or striations 15 described above with appropriate yarn thread ups.
Installation of the carpet planks or modules 12 of this invention in a room may be accomplished by snapping a chalk line on the floor of the room dividing the room approximately in half. The line typically will be (but need not necessarily be) parallel to least one wall in the room. A line of carpet modules 12 of this invention is then laid on the floor end to end and aligned with the chalk line on the floor. A second line of modules 12 may then be installed beside the first line but with the end to end seams of the second row staggered relative to the first line. Such staggering can be done with the seams of one row of modules 12 at the mid-point of a contiguous row of modules 12, but the seams may be staggered in different relative positions, such as is achieved by staggering adjacent rows offset by one third of module length. Moreover, alternate rows need not be aligned with each other. When alternating lines of modules 12 or every third line of modules 12 are to be aligned, it may be desirable to snap a second and perhaps a third and fourth chalk line perpendicular to the first chalk line so that ends of tiles in alternating rows are aligned with one of the second or third or fourth (perpendicular) chalk lines.
The modules 12 may be “free laid” without adhesive or any other attachment to the floor or each other. The modules 12 may also be glued down with appropriate conventional adhesive spread on the floor, the undersides of the tiles or both in advance of installation. The modules 12 may also be installed utilizing adhesive-bearing connectors such as Interface Flooring's TacTiles® adhesive connectors, typically by locating such a connector 26 on the undersides of the modules 12 at every pair of corners 28 (see
A first sequence of steps for rectangular carpet module installation with adhesive-bearing connectors at about half of all module corners includes:
A second, alternative sequence of steps for floor module installation with connectors at about half of all module corners includes:
The carpet modules 12 of this invention can also be installed in the same general manner as described above but with placement of a connector at all tile corners or at any fraction of all of the tile corner locations. Regardless of the number of connectors used for an installation of carpet modules 12, the sequence of steps can be varied for ease, convenience and otherwise as desired in a particular installation.
The modules 12 of this invention may be produced by first producing a wider carpet web having a pattern exhibiting the characteristics described herein and then cutting the web into modules 12 in the conventional ways that tiles are typically cut from a carpet web produced for that purpose. The web design can be rendered in any conventional manner, such as tufting or weaving a web with a desired pattern or by printing a tufted, woven or other web. The techniques of this invention are particularly well suited, however, for production by rendering the pattern through tufting with yarn pre-dyed in suitable colors.
Appropriate backing like that used for conventional square carpet tiles is applied to the carpet web before it is cut into modules 12 in order to impart appropriate stiffness, stability and other needed properties.
Different arrangements are possible for the components and steps shown in the drawings or described above, and components and steps not shown or described can also be used. Similarly, some features and subcombinations are useful and may be employed without reference to other features and subcombinations. Embodiments of the invention have been described for illustrative and not restrictive purposes, and alternative embodiments will become apparent to readers of this patent. Accordingly, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments described above or depicted in the drawings, and various embodiments and modifications can be made without departing from the scope of the claims below.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/742,135, filed Aug. 3, 2012, which application is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61742135 | Aug 2012 | US |
