The present flex holder pertains to the sign industry, and more particularly it pertains to a retainer with a calibrated retention for retaining a flexible face material to a sign frame in such a way as to release the face material during a catastrophic weather event, and protect the structure of the sign from damage.
The flexible face sign of interest herein has its face material stretched across the opening in a sign frame and is anchored to the periphery of the sign's opening. Holding devices are attached at intervals along the flexible sign face and are made to engage into a slot along the sign frame to retain the face material to the sign casing. The holding devices and the slot are covered with a cap or a moulding that enhances the general appearance of the sign. These holding devices are referred to in the industry as flex holders.
Examples of flex holders of the prior art are disclosed in several U.S. Patents granted to Normand Verret, the inventor of the present invention. These U.S. Patents are:
The one-piece reversible flex holder described in the latest of the above documents; U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,080, has enjoyed a great commercial success over the last 20 years. This flex holder remains a big seller to this day. This reversible flex holder is the subject of the present improvement invention.
Although the flex holder described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,6378,080 is mentioned herein as a precursor to the present invention, other analogous applications are now being considered. These analogous applications comprise tarp buildings and tarp structures such as portable garages, greenhouses, horse arenas, hay storage barns as well as awnings, shades, and the like. Therefore, the flex holder as used in the sign industry should not be considered as a limitation to the present invention. The sign industry is used herein for convenience to explain the importance of the present invention in limiting wind-induced damages.
Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent around the world due to climate changes. Hurricanes and tornadoes are more common in all regions. Signs exposing large surfaces are more than ever susceptible of structural damages.
One example of such damage took place along a Trans-Canada highway, near Bertierville, Québec, Canada. The sign had a surface of 20 feet high by 40 feet wide, and was mounted at a height of 100 feet. The sign was supported by two I-beams, each having a depth of 36 inches, a flange width of 16 inches and a thickness of ¾ inch. During an unexpected strong wind, which was later classified as “an isolated extreme wind gust”, the sign was blown down. The two large I-beams were twisted and bent to the ground, without damaging the flexible face material or the sign box.
This demonstrates that the present-day design of sign structures needs to be revised in view of new extreme weather conditions. The one-in-thirty-years weather events that were considered in the past may no longer apply, and therefore, engineering practices and construction methods need to be revised to take into account these climate changes.
Wind damages to sign structures have been a concern for sign builders for a long time, and all over the world. Examples of solutions found in the prior art include the following inventions.
As can be appreciated from the above list of proposed solutions that wind damage has perhaps been an international issue since the first use of stand-alone commercial signs. Although the prior art offers many solutions to prevent or limit wind damage to a sign, none of these solutions is applicable to modern wide face sign made of flexible face material.
The present inventor's flex holder as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,6378,080 has been licensed in several different countries. As a result, most wide-face signs used today in Europe and America, are made of flexible face material held to a rectangular frame by such flex holders, and the solutions described in the prior art do not apply to these flexible face signs.
Therefore, it is believed that the sign industry needs new flex holders capable of retaining the flexible face material in such a way as to allow the face material to slip out of the flex holders and release the wind pressure on the sign structure, as illustrated in
After a major wind storm, the signs that are released-opened could be repaired by simply reinstalling new flex holders on the same flexible face and re-tightening the flexible face to the frame.
In the present invention, there is provided a one-piece reversible flex holder with a calibrated retention latch mounted therein. In one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a combination of a one-piece reversible flex holder, a flexible face material and a sign frame. The one-piece reversible flex holder is affixed to the flexible face material by a latch, and retains the flexible face material to the sign frame. The latch is selectively openable to release the flexible face material upon a pre-determined tension being applied to the flexible face material.
This new flex holder is also referred to herein as the “new flex holder” or “calibrated flex holder”, for convenience. The new flex holder is made of malleable material, such as aluminium for example. The new flex holder has a latch blade that is hinged to a latch block. The latch blade is configured to bend over a flexible face material and to engage with the latch block, for retaining the flexible material between the latch blade and the latch block. The new flex holder also has teeth to engage inside the slot of an extruded moulding along the perimeter of the sign.
The hinge on the latch blade has a S-shape segment capable of deformation under a determined load. An excessive force on the flexible face material such as a strong gust of wind causes the S-shape segment to collapse on itself, thereby releasing the latch blade from the latch block, and letting the flex face material slip out of the new flex holder. Excessive wind forces causes the face of the sign to open, to let the wind pass through the sign face to release stresses on the sign structure.
In another aspect of the present invention, the new flex holder with a calibrated retention, retains its reversibility features as described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,080. The new flex holder can be mounted one way with the calibrated retention feature active or another way with the calibrated retention feature inactive, as will be explained later.
Still another feature of the calibrated flex holder is that this new flex holder is a modified version of the flex holder patented in U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,080, and the modification is minimal. For that reason, the new flex holder is susceptible of a low cost of manufacture with regards to both materials and labour, and which accordingly is then susceptible of low prices of sale to the public.
Drawings of the new reversible flex holder with calibrated retention according to the preferred embodiments are provided in which:
Referring simultaneously to
Referring firstly to
The new flex holder 120 as shown in
The new flex holder 120 is made of a malleable material having a certain elasticity such as aluminium. The desired degree of elasticity can be expressed as the hinge 126 being capable of bending about the bending axis thereof without reaching the tensile strength of the material. Similarly, the hinge 126 is capable of compression and deformation in a direction perpendicular to the bending axis thereof without reaching the tensile strength of the material.
The new S-shape hinge 126 has a bendable segment 130 along its bending axis 132. The bendable segment 130 is subject to more bending than compression, as both ends of this segment 130 touches the plane 134 of the latch blade 124. The bendable segment 130 is subjected to bending stresses when a force “F” is applied along a plane 134 of the latch blade 122. This bendable segment 130 forms a diagonal of the S-shape hinge 126. This bendable segment 130 also forms a diagonal along the plane 134 of the latch blade, and it is deformable from this diagonal position toward a perpendicular alignment relative to the plane of the latch blade 124. This bendable segment 130 is calibrated to compress or deform when a one-in-thirty-years wind storm occurs, or to compress or deform under a loading according to a designer's choice. A deformation of the hinge 126 causes the latch blade 124 to disengage from the latch block 122 as shown in
It will be appreciated that the thickness as well as the tensile strength of the material of the bendable segment 130, can be selected to calibrate the force “F” that is require to deform the segment 130 and open the flex holder 120. Preferable the calibration is effected between the yield strength and the tensile strength of the material used.
Referring now to
When the new flex holder 120 is mounted in the reverse mode, as illustrated in
It will be appreciated that the calibrated flex holder 120 retains all the features in the flex holder 20 described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,637,080, and offers the option of using the calibrated-retention feature or not.
Referring to
The present application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 63/372,382, filed Mar. 9, 2022.
Number | Date | Country | |
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63372382 | Mar 2022 | US |