Patent Application
20060097100
Carpet rolling and unrolling devices are well known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,391,940 (the '940 patent) describes a sophisticated apparatus for unrolling, measuring, cutting, and rerolling rolled floor covering material such as carpet. A well known limitation of such devices is that they are large and require two or more people to move and are designed for a warehouse rather than a job site. A machine requiring two people is not a severe limitation for large commercial jobs, but a machine requiring two people to operate would be severely limiting for smaller residential jobs. Smaller installation shops often consist of a solo carpet installer. It is not cost effective for solo carpet installers to own and deploy solution like the '940 patent. The device taught by the '940 patent is designed and is generally useful in a warehouse setting, but is too large for a solo carpet installer and is not designed to be taken to a job site.
Other techniques have been deployed to make carpet unrolling and rolling devices more portable. However these so-called portable machines are still designed for warehouses and are too large to take to a job site. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,169 (the '169 patent) teaches of such a device. The device taught by the '169 patent, although still very large, has wheels so that the device can be moved to different locations at the warehouse.
Another carpet unrolling and rolling device is the device taught by U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,882 (the '882 patent). The '882 patent teaches of a device for receiving, measuring, and cutting rolled floor coverings such as carpet rolls. The device of the '882 patent has a sophisticated mechanism for receiving and rerolling carpet and a cutter bar used to cut the material to the desired length. The '882 is described as a portable device in that it can be configured to fit inside of a standard installation van.
The '882 is an attractive solution for larger companies and carpet installation teams. However, the cost and size of the '882 patent, while an improving over older solutions such that taught by the '940 patent, is too feature laden, making it both too costly and too large for solo carpet installers. The '882 is also limited in that it performs the rerolling, measuring, and cutting functions of carpet installation but is not integrated with a device to unroll the carpet, thereby requiring the installing to come up with second device or platform for managing the unrolled carpet. Although the '882 is somewhat portable, it is too large for a single individual to move easily, and its portability is compromised when combined with a device for unrolling carpet, making it too large too large to fit inside a standard installation van.
These well known devices all work well in situations where a team of installers are available, but, because of their size and cost, are not practical for a solo carpet installer. A solo carpet installer needs a device specifically designed to allow a single individual to manage large carpet rolls. What is needed is a carpet rolling and unrolling device that can be transported to a job site, operated, and relocated easily by a solo carpet installer.
The present invention overcomes limitations of traditional carpet rolling/unrolling devices and realizes new benefits by teaching a new carpet rolling/unrolling device that can be operated by a solo carpet installer and easily transported to a job site. Specifically, the present invention teaches a device wherein each component is weight limited so that it can be transported when necessary by a single individual. The present invention further avoids the prior art use of a large cutting blade and instead teaches a system designed for efficient utilization of a hand held knife for a carpet cutting device.
The preferred embodiment of the present invention is generally described in
The cutting support 15 is a flat surface that is also weight limited to a weight that can be moved by a single individual. Unlike prior art cutting supports, the cutting support 15 itself is knife free, having no cutting mechanism at all. The lack of any cutting device enables the cutting support 15 to be sufficiently weight limited. Instead of including a large cutting blade, the carpet is cut along the cutting support 15 by the use of a handheld cutting system 55.
In the preferred embodiment, the unroller 10 and the reroller 30 are unpowered. In an alternate embodiment, a power device 50 is added to the unroller to facilitate power unrolling of a carpet roll.
To use the invention, the system is disassemble into pieces, each piece weight limited so it can be lifted, loaded, and unloaded by a single individual when desired. The system can then be transported to the job site by a low cost vehicle such as an automobile, pickup, van, or trailer. Upon reaching the job site, the system is assembled as shown in
This description is provided for purposes of illustration, not limitation. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, several aspects of the invention could be implemented in different ways without affecting the spirit of the invention. For example, the illustrations show the unroller divide into 3 discrete motors, but the actual number deployed could be large or smaller, as long as each discrete unit is weight limited. Likewise the unroller is depicted as five discrete pieces, but the actual number, is not important. In addition to the knife 55 shown, a variety of alternate cutting technologies could be deployed in the spirit of this invention.
This invention is only to be limited by the claims below.
