Patent Application
20120023696
The present invention is in the field of floor mops.
A variety of floor dusters and floor mops have been used for cleaning floors. The floor duster and floor mops typically provide a handle connected to a head that can swivel for traveling over a surface of a floor. Typically, a fabric such as a cloth or paper sheet is attached to the bottom of the cleaning head. The fabric has been made disposable for disposal after its cleaning surface is used.
Since the fabric is disposable, it has been desired to provide a reversible cleaning pad. Cleaning pads such as shown in Poloichicchio entitled Cleaning Pads, U.S. Pat. No. 7,028,364 issued Apr. 18, 2006 provides for a cleaning pad which can be manually reversed, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. Unfortunately, people really do not like to touch the mop head since it is dirty. One method to allow reversing while avoiding touching the mop head is shown in Gullicks entitled dual sided flip mop United States patent publication 20070107153 published May 17, 2007, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, uses a large clip for clipping a sheet that can then be reversed.
A variety of mechanisms have been attached to mops for assisting in wringing, for example in Popeil entitled wringer mop, U.S. Pat. No. 3,699,603 issued Oct. 24, 1972, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference, provides for a mop that has a wringing mechanism attached to a mop for manipulating the wringing of the mop head without touching the mop head.
A flip mop apparatus has a handle; a mop head mounted on the handle; a sheet flipper mounted on the mop head; and a cleaning sheet mounted to the sheet flipper. The sheet flipper has an outside arm and an inside arm that are movable and configured to transpose between a first mode and a second mode for flipping the cleaning sheet that has a first edge mounted to the outside arm and a second edge mounted to the inside arm.
The sheet flipper may have an inside gear in gear connection with an outside gear. The inside gear may have gear connection with the outside gear through an intermediate gear. The inside gear may have inside gear outside teeth meshing with intermediate gear teeth on the intermediate gear. Intermediate gear teeth also mesh with outside gear inside teeth. The inside gear is mounted to the inside arm and the outside gear is mounted to the outside arm. A main gear can be mounted on the mop head in rotational configuration relative to the mop head. The main gear may have main gear teeth that mesh with inside gear inside teeth. The inside gear is mounted to either the outside arm or the inside arm and the inside gear is mounted to either the inside arm or the outside arm.
The mop head further may have a lower housing and an upper housing fitting over the lower housing. The mop head has a mop handle connection including a swivel joint mounted to a swivel joint base. The swivel joint base is mounted to the lower housing. The mop head further comprises an inside frame, and the inside frame has a swivel connection to the handle since the inside frame is mounted to the lower housing of the mop head. The outside arm may have a first slot for retaining the sheet, and the inside arm may have a second slot for retaining the sheet. The outside arm may have an outside arm inside portion angled to an outside arm terminal portion, and the inside arm may have an inside arm inside portion angled to an inside arm terminal portion.
The following call out list of elements may serve as a reference for the figures.
The mop has a handle and a head. The present invention is directed to the head of the mop. The head of the mop is mounted on the handle. The handle 95 can be a broomstick handle made of wood, plastic or a metal pole. The mop handle connection 30 connects between the mop handle and the mop head. The mop handle connection includes a swivel joint 31 that allows swiveling of the handle left and right as well as up-and-down. The swivel joint 31 is mounted in a hinge apparatus. The hinge apparatus preferably comprises a pair of swivel joint hinges, namely a first swivel joint hinge 33 and a second swivel joint hinge 34 protruding from a swivel joint base 32. The swivel joint base 32 is fixedly attached to the mop head at an inside frame 41 so that the mop handle can steer the direction of the mop head travel.
The pair of swivel joint hinges are formed as columns rising from the swivel joint base, and can be made of the same piece of material as the swivel joint base. The pair of columns form a yoke for retaining the swivel joint 31. The swivel joint has a first pair of swivel joint protrusions 36 that fit into the swivel joint hinge openings 35 of the first swivel joint hinge and the second swivel joint hinge. The second pair of swivel joint protrusions 38 are on the swivel joint 31 and serve to allow left and right motion on a handle yoke opposite the swivel joint hinge 33.
The mop head has a top housing and a bottom housing. The upper housing 50 encloses an upper surface of the mop head and a lower housing 40 encloses a lower surface of the mop head. The inside arm 60 holds a first edge of a cleaning sheet, and the outside arm 70 holds a second edge of a cleaning sheet. An outside arm is mounted on the outside arm shaft 87. The movement of the inside arm and outside arm are controlled by a main gear 51. The main gear 51 has a pair of main gear tabs 56 that protrude from a top surface of the main gear 51. The main gear 51 has a plurality of main gear teeth 52 disposed in a circumferential arrangement around the side of the main gear 51. The main gear tooth 52 interacts with a plurality of teeth on an inside surface of an inside gear 53. The inside gear 53 is oriented normal to the main gear 51 such that rotation of the main gear about an axis basically orthogonal to the floor results in rotation of the inside gear 53 in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. The inside gear 53 is meshed with intermediate gears 54. Preferably, there are a pair of intermediate gears 54 for transferring motion of the inside gear 53 to an outside gear 55. The intermediate gears 54, reverse the rotation of the outside gear 55 relative to the movement of the inside gear 53.
The outside arm 70 has an outside arm shaft 87 that is connected to the inside gear 53. When the outside arm 70 moves with the outside shaft 87, the outside shaft 87 moves with and is connected to the inside gear 53. The outside arm 70 has an outside arm terminal portion 72 at a right angle to an outside arm inside portion 73 when the sheet 88 is rectangular and has right angle corners. The outside arm terminal portion 72 preferably has a pair of outside arm slots 71 which can be used for connecting a sleeve of a cloth to the outside arm terminal portion 72. Optionally, hardware such as a clip can be inserted into the outside arm slots 71 to allow connection and removable connection between the outside arm slots 71 and the cleaning cloth or cleaning sheet. Similarly, the inside arm 60 has an inside arm terminal portion 62 that is normally oriented at a right angle from an inside arm inside portion 63 when the sheet is rectangular and has right angle corners. The inside arm inside portion 63 is connected to and moves with the outside gear 55.
The motion of a sheet flipper flips the sheet 88 so that a user can use the opposite side of a sheet after using a first side of a sheet for wiping the floor. This allows more than one use of a sheet, since a sheet has a pair of surfaces which can be called a front side and a backside, or otherwise a first side and a second side such as by any naming convention including the terms a primary side and a secondary side or by the letters side A and side B. The operation of the sheet flipper is synchronized. The outside arm 70 swings from a left side of the mop head to the right side of the mop head and can reciprocate back to the left side of the mop head. The inside arm 60 can also swing from a left side of the mop head to the right side of the mop head. The inside arm and outside arm are arranged so that they do not strike each other while swinging past each other. The inside arm is configured to be inside the outside arm. The outside arm passes over the inside arm when swinging past the inside arm. The inside arm and outside arm are configured to be swinging simultaneously as in a scissor action in a balanced and opposing movement.
A number of gears for making the scissor action sheet flipper can be stored in a gear device depression 49. The gear device, namely the inside gear 53, the outside gear 55 and the intermediate gears 54 preferably fit in a gear depression 49 which retains the gears in a housing 40. Another optional feature of the present invention is that the sheet may have a string or elastic cord passing from one end of the sheet to another end of the sheet, such as any string or elastic cord passing from a first end of the sheet to a second end of the sheet, or such as a string or elastic cord passing from a right end of the sheet to a left end of the sheet. The gear device may have an opening in the outside gear for allowing passage of the outside arm shaft 87 to connect between the outside arm and the inside gear so that the inside gear rotates with the outside arm.
The inside frame 41 can be made as a removable portion or removable modular portion from the lower housing 40. The inside frame preferably includes a plurality of ribs such as a first set of ribs 42 and a second set of ribs 43 which engage with slots in a top surface of the lower housing. The inside frame 41 preferably also includes an axle support 46 and an opening 47 to allow the lower housing 40 to connect to the swivel joint base 32 without the swivel joint base 32 interfering with the main gear 51. The main gear 51 is preferably made with a hollow portion in the middle so that the main gear 51 turns around the swivel joint base 32 in a motion that can be clockwise in one direction require counterclockwise in the opposite direction.
A top retainer 44 can engage with the upper housing 50 or snap together with the upper housing 50 to secure the inside frame 41 to the upper housing 50. The inside frame 41 can be made as a frame shaped structure with a number of gaps 45 between the ribs on the frame structure.
The sheet 88 reverses in orientation and is attached at each end to the flipping arms of the sheet flipper. The second embodiment sheet flipper can be used with the present invention for flipping the sheet. The sheet flipper can be made with gearing, and can also be made by a wire spring which can be a single length of flexible wire with a retainer fit over the wire. The wire can be of resiliency similar to a wire coat hanger. As seen in
Therefore, while the presently preferred forms of the invention has been shown and described, and several modifications thereof discussed, persons skilled in this art will readily appreciate that various additional changes and modifications may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention, as defined and differentiated by the following claims.
