Patent Application
20250060189
The present invention relates generally to the field of firearm grips, and more specifically to firearm grips containing spring mechanisms.
In maintaining the aiming stability of a firearm, it is important to balance the opposing forces of the shooter's hand squeezing the gun grip and the reactive force of the grip back against the hand. The stronger and more uniform the shooter's grip, the more sustained is the balance of forces through the firing cycle, thereby providing greater stability of the firearm and optimal aiming accuracy.
Conventional firearm grips, however, are too rigid to allow for much of a range in the maximum reactive force they can apply against a shooter's grip, so that it's difficult to achieve a sustained balance of forces for shooters having different grip strengths. The present invention addresses this shortcoming by providing an adjustable reactive force supplied by multiple steel coil compressive springs in a sliding panel of the gun grip.
In the present invention, the rigid front face of the gun grip is replaced with a sliding grip panel, which inserts into a conjugate panel recess in the gun grip. The panel recess contains multiple coiled compression springs, which extend between the interior forward end of the grip panel and the rear surface of the panel recess. The compression of the springs, under the inward constrictive force of a shooter's hand on the gun grip, produces an opposing outward expansive force, which changes in response to the degree of insertion of the grip panel into the panel recess. The relationship between the width of the grip panel insertion “x” and the springs' reactive force “F” is given by Hooke's Law as follows:
F=Kx
where K is the sum total of the spring constants of the multiple compression springs.
For example, if the sliding grip panel's insertion width is 15 millimeters, and there are three compression springs, each having a spring constant K of 8 Newtons/millimeter, the balancing reactive force exerted upon the grip panel by the springs would be:
Since typical shooter's grip forces fall in the range of 40-80 lbs. (178-356 N), a three-spring version of the present invention's reverse pressure mechanism, having a grip panel insertion width in the range of 5-15 mm (0.2-6 in.), would require a total spring constant K in the range:
so that the range of individual spring constants would be 4-8 N/mm.
In one embodiment of the present invention, the outward expansive force exerted by the compression springs is adjustable by removing or adding to the number of springs or substituting springs with higher or lower spring constants.
In order to maintain the proper balance of forces on the grip panel, it's important that the reactive force of the compression springs be uniform across the length of the grip panel. This requires a uniform spring constant for all springs and uniform spring spacing on the rear surface of the panel recess. In order to insure uniformity in the shooter's constricting force on the gun grip, the outer surface of the grip panel preferably has indentations for proper positioning of the shooter's fingers.
Since the reverse pressure grip enables a stabilizing balance of forces on the gun grip with less constricting force from the shooter's hand, the shooter will experience less grip fatigue and will consequently be able to maintain aiming accuracy over a longer time period. Also, the reverse pressure grip allows shooters having below average grip strength to still maintain aiming stability using less force than would be required by conventional grips.
The foregoing summarizes the general design features of the present invention. In the following sections, specific embodiments of the present invention will be described in some detail. These specific embodiments are intended to demonstrate the feasibility of implementing the present invention in accordance with the general design features discussed above. Therefore, the detailed descriptions of these embodiments are offered for illustrative and exemplary purposes only, and they are not intended to limit the scope either of the foregoing summary description or of the claims which follow.
Referring the Figures, they depict a standard P320 handgun grip frame 30, having a gun grip 31 that has been modified in accordance with reverse pressure mechanism 10 of the present invention. As best seen in
Multiple steel coiled compression springs 15 (three in this embodiment) within the panel recess 14 are configured to resist the sliding insertion of the grip panel 11 into the panel recess 14 through the insertion width 20 (best seen in
As best seen in
Although the preferred embodiment of the present invention has been disclosed for illustrative purposes, those skilled in the art will appreciate that many additions, modifications and substitutions are possible, without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention as defined by the accompanying claims.
