Patent Application
20170209888
This invention relates to racks used to support heavy doors while they are prepped and painted and when they are stacked to dry in a horizontal position. Prepping is defined as activities performed before painting such as sanding and taping.
Refinishing a door is time consuming labor. Typically this work involves activities such as sanding, painting, varnishing and drying the door. Placing the door in a vertical position during this work is problematic. Sprayed paint may reach surrounding objects and debris from the floor may foul the wet paint on the door. Wet paint may run down a vertical door creating unsightly tracks. It is more difficult for a painter to work on a vertical door than on a horizontal door.
Ideally a door should be held in a horizontal position while it is being refinished. In addition, both sides of the door should be easily exposed to be worked on, and when painted, the wet paint should not be marred by the holding mechanism.
A problem that emerges when multiple doors are painted is that a large surface area is needed to store the doors while they are drying. Therefore, there is a need to store the drying doors in a stack.
Another problem of significance is that freshly painted doors should be allowed to dry in a location removed from the one where doors are sanded and painted to avoid unwanted dust and paint settling on them and marring their surface.
Painting racks for heavy doors have special requirements. Assume a weight of 100 lbs per door and a stack of 10 doors. The rack should therefore be capable of supporting a 1000 lbs weight. Rack construction should therefore take weight into account.
The cost incurred to merchants for shipping racks to customers should also be a consideration. Given the structural requirements of racks to support heavy doors and their volume in an assembled state, the shipping cost incurred by merchants can be prohibitive. Therefore, the invention should also minimize the weight of the rack and its volume in its disassembled state, leaving the assembly task to the customer.
None of the prior art offers the functionality, flexibility of use, simplicity and economy of this invention. Further features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention over the prior art will be more fully understood when considered with respect to the following detailed description claims and accompanying drawings.
Further features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention over the prior art will be more fully understood when considered with respect to the following detailed description and claims.
This invention is a sturdy door rack that can easily be disassembled for shipping and storage and reassembled for use. Essentially, it comprises stackable blocks that fit over each other in Leggo™ fashion to form supporting columnar stacks. The invention also comprises anchors adapted to be screwed into the edges of a door. The anchors fit inside grooves configured in the blocks. Base plates are adapted to be positioned at the bottom of the columns.
The door rack can be configured to form four stacks of blocks to support the door at four points. Alternatively, for easy rotation of the door around an axis, the rack can be configured in two stacks to support the door at two points that define an axis of rotation going through the door's center of gravity. In practice these two stacks can each include a single block, each block supported by a base plate.
The rack also includes anchors, each anchor being formed by a rod terminated at one end with a wood screw or some other form of pointed end, and at its other end with a cap comprising a bolt head or a screw head. To facilitate manual handling and flipping of the door, the rod can be made of a central cylindrical core covered by a rotatably loose tubular sleeve. The wood screw and the rod can be solidly attached or can be joined by means of a male/female threaded connector. Similarly, the cap and the rod can be solidly attached or can be joined by means of a male/female threaded connector.
Each block has on its top surface a groove into which the anchors are inserted. When blocks are stacked, anchors between adjacent blocks are held firmly in place. The groove has a rectangular cross section and is typically longer than wide to provide pitch and yaw stability to the anchor. The width of the groove is significantly larger than the diameter of the rod to provide limited horizontal play and account for positional inaccuracy of the anchor on the edge. However the height of the groove is the same as the diameter of the rod to hold the anchors snuggly in place, completely restricting any pitch movement when the anchors are inserted between two blocks in a stack, thereby providing greater mechanical strength to the anchors.
The blocks are stacked Leggo™ style on top of each other. They are equipped on their lower surface with pins, and on their upper surface with holes positioned to mate with the pins of an adjacent block. Typically each block could have two pins and two holes, or four pins and four holes. The length of the pins can be longer than a typical Leggo™ pin for greater stability.
The bottom of the stack includes a base plate with the appropriate hole configuration to mate with the bottom block of the stack. The base plate can be screwed, nailed, glued or pinned to the bottom block. The base plate and the bottom block can also be fabricated from a single slab of material, forming a single piece. The base plate may also include a hole to facilitate its attachment to a supporting structure such as a saw horse. The base plate can also be attached to a supporting structure by means of a vise.
The rack could include four multi-block columnar stacks to support the door at four points, for example when the doors need to be stacked for drying. The rack could include four single-block columns to support the door at four points, for example when the doors need to be prepped or painted. In this configuration, the base plate would be attached by screw, bolt or vise to a supporting structure such as a saw horse to elevate the door and permit its flipping upside down.
The rack could also include two single-block columns to support the door at two points, for example when the door needs to be axially rotated for prepping and painting. In this configuration, the base plate would also be attached by screw, bolt or vise to a supporting structure such as a saw horse to elevate the door and permit its flipping upside down. In this case, it is advantageous to add a cylindrical concave internal groove inside the rectangular groove to hold the anchor in place but yet facilitate the rotation of the door.
Rotation of the door can be limited by means of a stop bar horizontally inserted through a hole in one of the blocks, and making contact with a stop anchor attached to the edge of the door.
Base plates of different sizes are provided, each size appropriately designed for the way the base is used. For example, large base plates are used to support multi-block self standing columnar stacks as employed in drying. Narrow elongated base plates are more appropriate in a two-column configuration, when each column includes a single block, as employed in prepping or painting. In this arrangement, the base plates are supported by a supporting structure such as a saw horse. The anchors on top of the two columns define an axis of rotation around which the door can be pivoted.
Narrow short base plates are more appropriate in a four-column configuration, when each column includes a single block, as employed in prepping or painting. In this arrangement, the base plates are supported by a saw horse. In this arrangement, the base plates are also supported by a supporting structure such as a saw horse.
The rack can only carry a maximum weight, and therefore, the maximum height of the rack should be limited for safety reasons. The top block on each stack is identifiable by means of shape, color, engraving or printing to indicate that the maximum stack height has been reached.
An advantage of this invention is its flexibility in making a large number of configurations possible. For example if the total number of blocks available is 16, one could use only two blocks to support a door along an axis through its center of gravity. Alternatively, one could use four blocks to support the door at four points. Yet alternatively, one could use eight blocks, forming four stacks of two blocks each. Yet one could use twelve blocks forming four stacks of three blocks each. Yet one could use all sixteen blocks forming four stacks each having four blocks. In practice, the rack kit would typically include 40 blocks allowing the user to form four stacks with up to 10 blocks each. The maximum height of a stack is determined by the combined weight of the doors and the mechanical strength of the blocks and anchors. Therefore the rack kit contains at least four blocks, each block is configured to be stackable. “Some” of the blocks can be arranged to form at least two stacks. In the previous sentence the word “some” means “all” or “less than all” indicating that all blocks may be used, yet that not all of the blocks need to be used. Equivalently, the expressions “some” and “some or all” are meant to be identical when they refer to the number of blocks from the kit being used to form stacks.
This invention will be better understood in light of the drawings. The rack in disassembled form comprises a small set of elements forming a construction set or construction kit, which can be compactly stored, easily shipped and quickly assembled. As shown in
The first set of components is a number of stackable blocks, each block essentially being polyhedra having parallel top and bottom surfaces.
The second set of components shown in
The anchors 4 can be built from easily available components. The rod 5 can be fully threaded or threaded only at its ends. One end of the rod 5 is attached to a cap 7 with a female thread, and the other end of the rod 5 is attached to a wood screw 6 also with a female thread. Alternatively the cap/rod combination could simply be a single piece, in the shape of a bolt adapted to fit into the female end of the wood screw 6.
The screws 6 allow the rods 5 to be screwably attached to edges of a door, typically to the upper and lower edges to avoid leaving visible marks on the door. The bolt heads or screw heads 7 allow the user to drive the screws.
The anchors 4 fit inside grooves 32 configured in the top face of each block 1. The grooves 32 are shaped to hold the rod portion 5 or the anchors 4. The depth of each groove 32 is approximately the same as the diameter of the rods 5 thereby allowing the rods 5 to fit snuggly between adjacent blocks 1 in the stack. In addition, the width of the grooves 32 is significantly wider than the diameter of the rods 5, thereby providing some horizontal play to allow for small horizontal inaccuracies in the placement of the anchors along the door's edges.
The third set of components shown in
Prepping or painting requires that the door be flipped. This can be accomplished by the implements illustrated in
The platform 17 is supported by a carpenter wooden saw-horse 18. The platform 17 can be clamped to the horse 18 by means of a vise 19 as shown in
The side anchors 12 and 14 are used to stop the door from rotating. This is done by inserting a bar 21 horizontally through the hole 22 in the block 15 such that the bar 21 makes contact with one or two of the side anchors 12 and 14. To rotate the door 11, the bar 21 is slid inside the hole 22 to break contact with the side anchors 12 and/or 14, the door 11 is manually rotated by manually grabbing anchors 12 and/or 14. The bar 21 is then slid back into the hole 22 to make contact with anchors 12 and/or 14 and secure the door 11 in its new position.
An alternative configuration for rotating a door for prepping or painting is shown in
To rotate the door 11, two men are required, one at each of the two supported edges. They flip the door by grabbing the anchors 26 and turning the door 11 upside down.
Many variations of the above design are possible. For example the blocks 1 do not have to be cubes. They could be polyhedra with parallel top and bottom surfaces, adequate for stacking. In addition, the grooves 32 do not have to be on the top surface of the block 1. They could be placed on the bottom surface. They could also be configured partially in the top surface and partially in the bottom surface. The blocks 1 can be made of wood, plastic or metal.
The pins 2 could range from a minimum of one pin per block 1 to six pins, the optimal number being between two and four pins per block 1. The pins 2 could be made of metal, or could simply be shaped in the block in the manner of a Leggo™ block.
If two pins per block are used, the pins 2 can be positioned on the same side of the block, for example both near the door or both far from the door as shown in
The pins 2 could be permanently mounted in the blocks, for example with glue. The pins could also be screwably inserted or force-fitted into the blocks. Insertion of the pins into the blocks 1 can be performed by the manufacturer or by the user.
The base plates 9, 17 and 28 could be manufactured independently of the blocks. Alternatively, they could be permanently attached to the bottom block, the method of attachment being for example glue, screws or nails. Another variation is to cast or form the base plate and the bottom block from a single piece of material. Base plates of different sizes are provided, each size appropriately design for the way the base is used. For example, a large base plate 9 is used to support self standing stacks as in
The number of doors safely stacked on a rack is limited by the mechanical strength of the rack. It is therefore suitable to limit the height of a stack of blocks. This can be done by configuring the top block without any holes on its top surface and clearly indicating that this is the top block for example by shape, print or color to remind the user not to exceed the recommended height.
This invention has several advantages over the prior art including 1) a sturdy block construction that can support heavy doors 2) The ability to be reconfigured into a single door carrier or a multiple door stack carrier thereby addressing respectively the tasks of painting and stacking doors and 3) the ability to be easily disassembled and reassembled for storage and shipping purposes.
While the above description contains many specificities, the reader should not construe these as limitations on the scope of the invention, but merely as exemplifications of preferred embodiments thereof. Those skilled in the art will envision many other possible variations within its scope. Accordingly, the reader is requested to determine the scope of the invention by the appended claims and their legal equivalents, and not by the examples which have been given.
