Patent Application
20070219070
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1. Field of the Invention
Walking platform for extending the reach of drywall installers, plasters, painters, arborists, fruit pickers, shelf stockers, inventory counters, etc.
2. Description of Related Art
Walking stilts for elevating painters and drywall installers so they can reach the ceiling of a room have been around for some time.
The essential parts of a drywall installer's stilt are a means to attach the stilt to the user's boot, a ground engaging foot structure, and a means to hold the boot attachment and the ground engaging foot apart in a vertically oriented relationship.
Various designs of these essential elements are described in the literature, some are on the market and in use by the construction industry.
Almost all are some form of fixed or articulated connection between the human's boot and a ground engaging foot. U.S. Pat. No. 5,645,515 by William Armstrong is typical. Many other examples of similar structures are easy to find in the patent data base.
These buckled on stilts are well made of machined parts and thus are very expensive. Several hundred dollars per pair.
The ground engaging foot is invariably no larger than the shoe on the human foot, and in some examples, it is narrower and/or shorter. Most have some articulation so that the ground foot operates with a “natural” longitudinal toe to heel flexibility. None were found with lateral flexibility which would permit the wearer to sense the ground foot stepping on a piece of construction junk, so the ankle could respond or poses capability to absorb the unevenness of stepping on construction junk and small items such as nails and drywall screws. As a result, falling is common and the extra height makes falling all the more likely to result in injury.
The dangers encountered in use, the cost, and an inappropriately designed ground foot has discouraged using the available stilts in other applications where extending height and reach would be a valuable asset.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,593,373 by Russell Hale overcomes the cost problem by using recycled buckets as the elevating platform. A bucket does provide more area than the human foot, but it the ground engaging area is shaped differently. Also a bucket has marginal strength at the rim, and the sides may buckle under load. Buckets simply were not designed to be walked upon in the manner Hale describes. Currently, good, strong, metal buckets are becoming scarcer. Plastic buckets are rapidly replacing metal buckets for nearly every use. Plastic buckets will have wider variation in shape, cross section, and material strengths. Choosing one that is strong enough to be used safely may be beyond the ability of Mr. Hale's targeted user.
Another problem with Mr. Hale's bucket stand is that the ground engaging portion is circular. This separates the extended feet. Since the buckets are axially vertical, the ground separation is directly translated to the wearer's foot positions. The wearer will have to “duck walk”, which is less stable, especially when gazing upwards.
Mr. Hale's bucket may step over construction junk, placing the junk inside the bucket rim. The next step might drag the junk, which may be attached to something, or simply be heavy, and cause stumbling. If a workman steps on a nail, drywall screw, or similar, a spot of high stress occurs on the rim. This could induce the bucket wall to buckle, which would quickly propagate into a total failure of the supporting bucket.
The present invention also has an oversize ground engaging area, but it is full contact, shaped, and positioned relative to the wearer's foot that the wearer walks naturally and the effects of stepping on junk is minimized, and in some cases transferred to the foot as a natural feel of an irregular walking surface, which is automatically compensated for by the user's sensing and proprioceptor nerves and mussel system.
3. Objects of the Invention
It is an object of the invention to provide a platform attachment to the foot of a workman so that he may walk around the worksite elevated 1 to 2 feet over the floor.
It is another object of the invention to provide a stable platform for standing upon that has a ground engaging foot having an area at least as large as the user's boot.
It is another object of the invention to provide safety features to avoid leg and ankle damage if the user should fall off the height extending invention.
It is another object of the invention to be stable enough that a workman can with reasonable safely walk around with his hands and gaze over his head, especially while holding a tool or load.
It is another object of the invention to provide shoe fastening that may be buckled and unbuckled with one hand and not having to be within the eyesight of the user.
It is another object of the invention that the cost be low.
It is another object of the invention to provide a natural gait for balance and stability. Feet not abnormally separated.
It is another object of the invention to provide a walking platform, that is intuitive to put on and intuitive to use; no significant learning curve.
It is another object of the invention to provide a walking platform relatively insensitive to walking over junk on the floor.
It is another object of the invention that there be no moving parts other than in the shoe buckling system.
Two large blocks of structural foam are fitted with shoe engaging buckles comprising quick release hook and loop fastenings (IE Velcro™). The user attaches his feet (boots) to the blocks and walks along carrying the blocks with him.
The general shape of the blocks is a rectangular parallelopiped. The axis of support is vertical, extending from the wearer's tibia bone and terminating at the ground under his foot.
The shoe platform is at least as large as the user's boot, and usually extends beyond the toe, heel, and each side of the user's boot. This boot platform area is projected to the ground contacting lower surface as the primary ground contacting foot. In addition, an laterally outward extension of the ground contacting foot is added at the heel for lateral stability. The extension is a block of the foam extending a distance approximately ⅔ the width of the foot and forward approximately 57% of the length of the foot.
The extension provides significant lateral stability as well as to moderate the effects of stepping on construction junk or in the case of an arborist, uneven ground.
The shoe attachment breaks away from the block or unlatches if the user should fall sideways. This protects the ankle and leg from being strained or broken due to lateral loads imposed by falling.
The following words are to be interpreted broadly and the definitions extend to all verbs, adverbs, adjectives, nouns, gerunds, tenses, etc. derived therefrom.
Boot—includes all kinds of footwear including oxford style shoes.
Foot—includes, depending on context, a shod human foot or the distal end of an appliance (the present invention) applied to a human foot and leg.
Buckle—any means for temporarily joining two straps or two ends of a strap. Includes hook-and-loop means, snaps, hooks, buttons, ring and tang buckles, friction buckling devices, etc.
Structural foam—any semi-rigid material having entrained air pockets and having sufficient strength for supporting a person in the configuration described herein. Styrofoam™, by Owens Corning Company, or polystyrene foam slabs are the preferred material.
Rectangular parallelopiped—a solid where each of the 6 sides are rectangles. However, modification to the parallelopiped such as rounding (even severely rounding) the edges, or slightly tapering for manufacturing processing purposes will be considered as still being a parallelopiped for the purposes of this disclosure and attached claims.
Floor—any surface intended to be walked upon. Includes earthen, concrete, grass, wooden, constructed floors, platforms, decks, etc surfaces.
The design of the stilt described herein is adapted to be a natural walking surface elevated 1 to 2 or more feet above the floor. The ground engaging foot is resilient and can deform around small objects. The primary portion 10 of the ground engaging foot may be slightly larger than the sole of a boot, and has an extension to the outside that is about ⅔ the width of the boot platform. The lift is a solid block of structural type plastic foam, and the boot clamping means is primarily hook and loop fastening straps securely attached to the lift block. One strap goes around the user's ankle and the other over the boot toe.
Lift block 2 in the preferred embodiment is a solid block of structural foam. The upper surface is large enough to accommodate a workman's boot. Six inches wide, and fourteen inches long has been found satisfactory for a 2 foot high lift. A shoe binding adapter is securely attached to the upper surface of block 2. The adapter is comprising a heel stop 3, an ankle strap 4, and a toe strap 5. The shoe binder is shown in
The lateral stabilizer block 8 extends from the outer face of the lift block 2 approximately under the heel of the wearer's boot. Block 8 extends from the back edge of block 2 to approximately 55 to 65% of the length of block 2, and extends outwardly from the outer face of block 2 approximately ⅔ the width of block 2. Dimensions found satisfactory are 6×14 inches for the upper surface and the primary portion of the ground engaging surface, and stabilizing block 8 being 4 inches wide and 8 inches long.
The ground engaging foot is comprised of resilient material. The structural foam of the lift block 2 is has adequate resilience, therefore, the foot is simply the foam portion at the bottom of block 2. The resilience of the foot permits the foot to yield and enclose small objects, thereby nullifying the effects of stepping on them.
As illustrated in
Toe and ankle strapping 4 and 6, and the heel block 3 may be embedded within the lift block 2, thereby eliminating the mounting base plate 5.
Stabilizing block 8 may be attached to the lift block 2 by any convenient means such as glueing, integrally molded, bolts, pins, etc, or a combination of these and similar fastening methods.
The ground engaging foot is comprised of resilient material. In the preferred embodiment, the foot is integral to and comprised of the same foam as the rest of the lift block 2. However, as an alternative, less desirable embodiment, the foot may be a separate block of 1½ to 2½ inches thick and the same shape and characteristics as described, but separated from the boot engaging means by a set of struts or other rigid structure. While structural foam is the preferred material, in all embodiments, the resilient material may be any other substance with the properties of yielding to enclose small objects on the floor when stepped upon.
This alternate embodiment is illustrated in
How to Use the Invention
Using the present invention is entirely intuitive. The blocks are strapped on the feet (boots) and one simply stands on the flat upper surface. As one walks, the blocks follow in a natural way, and because the ground engaging foot does not extend significantly beyond the boot toe, the striding motion even rocks naturally on the toe (forward) and heel edges.
The user's feet stand upon a flat surface parallel to the floor, and the stability of the floor engaging means is greater than that of a boot alone, thus the sensation and subsequent balance is the same as or nearly identical to standing on the floor itself. This permits the user to do the activities he would do from the floor such as looking and/or reaching upward while moving about. He should exercise at least the same care on the stilts as when moving on the floor with the same attitude.
The foregoing is considered as illustrative only of the principles of the invention. Further, since numerous modifications and changes will readily occur to those skilled in the art, it is not desired to limit the invention to the exact construction and operation shown and described, and accordingly, all suitable modifications and equivalents may be resorted to falling within the scope of the invention as defined by the claims which follow.
The embodiments of the invention in which an exclusive property right or privilege is claimed are defined as follows:
