Patent Application
20120246887
The present invention relates to a thin zipper and particularly to a teeth structure for coil zippers.
Zippers are widely used on daily life to temporarily couple two flexible elements together, and are mostly employed on clothes, leather goods or other textile products. Based on structures, they mainly can be categorized into coil form and individual form. The coil zippers have many advantages, such as simpler and easier fabrication, lower costs and the like, thus are widely adopted on garment manufacture. The coil zippers are generally formed by crimping polyester filaments, hence also are called polyester zippers. Moreover, they were usually made of nylon in the past, thus also are called nylon zippers.
Various techniques of zippers have been proposed in prior arts, such as R.O.C. patent No. M359953 entitled “Improved zipper tape” which discloses a zipper tape including elongated contiguous teeth and a strip fastened to one side. The teeth include a plurality of light extinction particles each has a plurality of recesses formed on the surface to refract the light so that the entire teeth look like having a mist surface.
To prevent the deviation problem of the core wire mentioned above, manufacturers try to insert more core wires in the inner space of the coil teeth. While such an approach increases the bracing force for the teeth, fabrication is more difficult, material cost increases, production yield decreases and flexibility of the zipper also suffers.
In view of the shortcoming of the conventional zipper that is unable to firmly fix the core wire and results in deviation of the core wire during pulling and dragging of the zipper and causes shortening of the lifespan of the zipper, the primary object of the present invention is to provide an improved coil zipper with a core wire to firmly fix a plurality of teeth.
The present invention provides a thin zipper which includes two sets of coil zippers fastened to two base cloths. Each set of coil zipper includes a plurality of teeth and at least one core wire threading through the teeth to couple the teeth in series. Each tooth includes a bracing section, two bent sections extended from two distal ends of the bracing section and a surface section. The bracing section leans on the base cloth and has a bracing inner edge on the inner side to brace the core wire. Each bent section has a latch portion engaged with another latch portion of a different tooth. The surface section is located between the two bent sections and has a packing inner edge formed on an inner side through a forming process to compress the core wire to generate deformation. The bracing inner edge and packing inner edge form an inner space between them at an interval smaller than the diameter of the core wire.
With the core wire compressed by the packing inner edge and bracing inner edge, the core wire is fixed firmly to avoid deviation, thus the lifespan of the zipper is longer. Moreover, by compressing the core wire, total thickness of the zipper can be reduced. Hence the compressed core wire of the invention can provide positioning effect superior to the conventional zipper, thus can achieve the same positioning effect with fewer core wires to reduce the material costs.
The foregoing, as well as additional objects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
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Due to the compression and deformation of the core wire 4, the surface area that the core wire 4 is in contact with the inner edges of the teeth 1 and 2 is greater, thus a more even bracing force is provided. Furthermore, fewer core wires 4 are required on the inner edges of the teeth 1 and 2 to provide the same strength of the zipper. With the coil zippers 100 and 200 threaded by fewer core wires 4, material cost can be reduced and total thickness of the teeth 1 and 2 also can be diminished to achieve a thinner zipper. As a result, the thinner zipper can provide better flexibility and is adaptable to more diversified clothes.
While the invention has been described by means of specific embodiments, numerous modifications and variations could be made thereto by those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and spirit of the invention set forth in the claims.
In summation of the above description, the present invention provides a significant improvement over the conventional techniques and complies with the patent application requirements, and is submitted for review and granting of the commensurate patent rights.
