Patent Application
20120180184
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
The present invention relates to garments generally, and more particularly to lightweight utility garments which can accommodate various accessory elements.
Many active occupations require that practitioners have any number of specialized tools, supplies, and materials on their persons for ready use at any time. Soldiers and police officers, for example, must carry weapons, ammunition, lights, food and beverage, etc. Yet in most situations there is a desire to avoid the carriage of extraneous items which might unnecessarily reduce the speed, agility, and endurance of the carrier. Hence it is desirable that accessories be capable of speedy attachment and removal from the wearer's garment.
Various accessory systems are known for attaching pouches and other elements to belts, vests, or other garments. A standardized attachment system employed by US military services is the U.S. Army's PALS (Pouch Attachment Ladder System) arrangement, illustrated in
Conventional MOLLE vests can interact with a wide variety of accessories and attachments which are configured for use with this standard arrangement of attachment points. Accessories attach to the loops with various hooks, straps or fasteners which engage with one or more of the loops. However, for the comfort and endurance of the wearer, it is desirable to reduce the weight of garments as much as possible.
The equipment carrying garment of the present invention offers a lightweight attachment structure which minimizes the material used by reducing the garment to a skeleton of horizontal bands connected by a few vertical bands. The garment employs a unitary bearing frame assembly which is composed of a glued layup of a substrate which is adhered to an outside layer. The layup is cut to define an array of holes delimiting horizontal bands interrupted at regular intervals by vertical bands. Such an arrangement may not have loops as such, but still is compatible with many PALS accessories, and is very lightweight.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a load supporting garment which is compatible with the MOLLE system which is very lightweight.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a load supporting garment which can be produced to accommodate attachments at any desired location.
Further objects, features and advantages of the invention will be apparent from the following detailed description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Referring more particularly to
The side portions 28 include two smaller bearing frame assemblies 30 which extend between the vest front segment 60 and rear segment 62, one of the assemblies on the left side of the user, and one on the right side.
The horizontal bands 68 are preferably about one inch tall, and spaced one inch apart, to be compatible with MOLLE system accessories. The holes 66 include full height openings 78 which are about one inch tall, and about three inches wide (less the width of the vertical band 70), to correspond to the width of two conventional loops in a MOLLE system element. The holes 66 also include narrow slots 80, for example at the top of the bearing frame assembly 58, which are as wide as the full height openings 78, but which are merely of sufficient height to allow a strap or other attachment element of an accessory to access the horizontal band partially defined by the slot 80.
As shown in
The garment 56 thus presents a series of horizontal bands, in an array similar in location and spacing to those found in a conventional MOLLE garment, as illustrated in
A number of openings may be presented to replicate one to one the conventional MOLLE loops, with the distance between center lines defined by the vertical bands 70 being 1.5 inches. For increased weight savings, in a preferred embodiment, the openings 78 span a distance greater than 1.5 inches, preferably the length of two MOLLE openings, less the width of one vertical band 70. Thus while the distance a (about 1½ inches) between the sewn seams 90 of the prior art MOLLE garment shown in
It will be noted that the material used to construct the bearing frame assembly 58 makes it possible to duplicate the MOLLE PALS pattern in a single sheet, saving both the labor of stitching multiple pieces of webbing and the weight of that added webbing. The bearing frame assembly thus has a load bearing component with an outer cover. By employing a stiffer substrate it is possible to do with less material, and thereby have a garment of overall lower weight.
The prior art MOLLE PALS segment is conventionally made from a sheet of 500 denier CORDURA® material with 1″ wide webbing sewn on one side. This system has an approximate areal density of 18 oz/square yard. The composite sheet material from which the present bearing frame assembly 58 is fabricated has an areal density of approximately 18.2 oz/square yard. Although the composite material sheet may have about the same or slightly greater areal density as the prior art assembly, by cutting the holes 66 out of the material, the bearing frame assembly 58 has less material per square yard of system coverage, and hence overall lower density which can result in a weight savings of 45 percent. If the substrate element is taken to have a perimeter 69 which encircles the substrate as constituted before the interior holes 66 are removed which defines a total surface area of the substrate, then all the holes 66 define an opening area.
The ratio of opening area to total surface area depends on whether the cut pattern of openings is carried to the edge of the sample, as shown in
The preferred embodiment also can provide a single slot to take the place of two MOLLE garment loops. The material is stiff enough to support this gap between vertical supports without the excessive sagging that would be present if webbing were to span this distance. Yet the greater spacing also requires less material, which contributes to the reduction of the overall weight of the system.
It should be noted that, although the bearing frame assembly 58 is shown without attached loops, loops may be sewn on the interior or the exterior of the bearing frame assembly wherever desired.
In should be noted that the garment may be provided with a lightweight barrier fabric on the interior which is fastened to the bearing frame assembly 58 in such a way as not to interfere with the attachment of accessories to the bearing frame assembly, but which serves to prevent the passage of dust, debris, etc., through the bearing frame assembly openings onto the inner garments of the wearer.
It should be further noted that although the bearing frame assembly is shown as a composite of multiple layers, it could also be formed as a single layer of an appropriate material of sufficient strength and durability or printability.
An accessory 72, as shown in
It is understood that the invention is not limited to the particular construction and arrangement of parts herein illustrated and described, but embraces all such modified forms thereof as come within the scope of the following claims.
