EP1267015B1

EP1267015B1 - Mechanical system for cleaning and/or treating buildings' surfaces

Info

Publication number: EP1267015B1
Application number: EP02076780A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Franco Roberto Calzolari
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 2001-05-07
Filing date: 2002-05-06
Publication date: 2005-08-03
Anticipated expiration: 2022-05-06
Also published as: ATE301224T1; ITMI20010925A0; EP1267015A1; ITMI20010925A1; DE60205309D1; DE60205309T2

Abstract

A mechanical system for the cleaning and/or treatment of buildings' surfaces is described, comprising mechanical means of support and actuation of cleaning instruments, characterized in that said mechanical means force said cleaning instruments to be permanently in contact with the surface to be cleaned, said cleaning instruments are made of one or more pressing cleaning rollers having along their lateral surface brushes suitable for cleaning the surface against which the rollers are pressed by said mechanical means. <IMAGE>

Description

The present invention relates to a mechanical system for the cleaning or other treatments like the painting or plastering of buildings' surfaces and/or their parts, as for example windows, glazed surfaces or alike.
The problem with cleaning vertical surfaces or buildings' fronts has been dealt up to now with using specialized personnel who works in hard and dangerous conditions. Furthermore, being a long, tiring and also expensive manual procedure, it is carried out sporadically, at long intervals, influenced also by the limited availability of time and personnel of the few companies equipped to do such jobs, especially for the case of big buildings and particularly of those buildings provided with continuous wide glazed surfaces.
However, even the cleaning of minor surfaces like home rolling shutters has similar problems, that is why they get cleaned painstakingly and sporadically, mainly on their outward facing side, due to the dangerousness as well of such operation for the home cleaning persons who take on such task with understandable great reluctance.
This situation causes in time several inconveniences like the build up of dust in the boxes, the rolling shutters' housings, and subsequently inside the inhabited rooms, a bad preservation state, and a high number of more or less serious domestic accidents caused by relatively effective cleaning attempts.
Special detergents are available on the market for the PVC, wood or metals, for all the materials used in the rolling shutters manufacturing, as well as electric brushes also of the portable kind, but none of these products is specifically fit for the cleaning of rolling shutters and none of them solves the problem of an inadequate cleaning of their outer parts.
The object of the present invention is that of solving this serious and heartfelt problem, which weighs upon the buildings' maintenance costs, and that up to now no solutions have been found that would allow to get rid of the current dangerous and expensive manual cleaning methods.
Many proposals have been developed in an attempt to solve this problem in the course of almost one century, but none had a practical application. These prior art devices were complex, mostly requiring sturdy supporting frames and/or suspension devices and cables. None of their prior art devices addressed the problem of removing the electrostatic charges and of automatic cleaning of the brushes by magnetic attraction, nor of supplying low voltage electric power to the motors through the guides or runners fixed to the walls, along which the device of the invention is traveling. Examples of these prior art systems can be found in the documents DE 228 097 C (year 1910), US-A-3,298,052, DE 18 69 097 U, US-A-2,670,490, FR-A-1,535879 and EP 505 956 A.
The problem of guaranteeing adhesion of the device to the surface in a simple wag is brilliantly solved by the present invention's system that for the first time allows to carry out said operations, which can include the painting, plastering and similar surfaces' treatments in addition to the cleaning. This is solved by a system according to claim 1. Further useful features of the system, and the details of some of its preferred embodiments, are illustrated in the appended claims.
Further advantages, details and particulars of the cleaning system according to the invention, will be better highlighted through an examination of the following description, with reference to the annexed drawings wherein some preferred embodiments are shown in an explanatory but not limiting way, and wherein:
Figure 1 is a perspective view of a system not according to the invention, employed for the rolling shutters' cleaning;
Figure 2 is partial perspective view of the device described in figure 1;
Figure 3 is a further partial perspective view of said device;
Figure 4 is a side view of the device of figures 1 - 3;
Figure 5 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the invention, employed for the cleaning of a front or a continuous glazed surface;
Figure 6 is a schematic front view of the device of figure 5;
Figure 7 is a side view of what is indicated by the arrow F of the device shown in figure 6;
Figure 8 is a front view of a second embodiment, employed for the cleaning of a fixed wings window or door;
Figure 9 is a sectional view of the device of figure 8, taken along the lines 9-9 of figure 8;
Figure 10 is a sectional view of the device of figure 8, taken along the lines 10-10 of figure 8;
Figure 11 is an enlarged detail of figure 9;
Figure 12 is a frontal view of a third embodiment of the system, employed for the cleaning of a sliding wings window; and
Figure 13 is a sectional view of the device of figure 12, taken along the lines 13-13 of figure 12.
Making initially reference to figures 1-4 wherein a device is described, comprehensively marked with the reference number 1, employed to clean rolling shutters, said device comprises a support 2 anchoring to the walls surrounding the rolling shutter. Said support 2 can, for example, be made of a pair of plates 2' and 2" advantageously providing a number of holes 3 to fix itself to said walls through fastening mechanical devices such as screws or alike.
Each of said plates 2', 2", provides, pivoted on it, a lever 4 advantageously connected to the plate through a partially threaded screw 5 or an equivalent mechanical means, in order to allow the insertion of an elastic element like a spring 11 that, as it will be better explained later on, adjusts the pressure of those cleaning instruments over said rolling shutter.
Said spring 11 is also engaged by a spring clamp 12 provided on each plate 2', 2" in order to obtain the needed opposing force, as it will be better illustrated afterwards, for the operation of said device 1.
Advantageously, on each lever 4 a conical pin 6 or a comparable means is applied to it in order to allow the connection between said mechanical means and such cleaning instruments.
These latter ones consist of a cleaning roller 7 that has brushes or similar means along its entire lateral surface for the elimination of dust.
On its own ends, the cleaning roller 7 has a pair of caps 9 having such a shape to provide each one with a paired surface to said conical pin 6, in order to allow the matching of said roller 7 and the levers 4. Furthermore, said caps 9 provide at their side a rubber ring 8, in order to improve the adhesion of the roller itself with the surface to be cleaned.
As an alternative, said rubber rings 8 can be provided on each end of the cleaning roller 7.
Optionally, as illustrated in figure 4, the whole device 1 or at least the cleaning roller 7 can be taken out of sight through the use of a case 10 associated to them, which can have other than an aesthetical purpose, also a mechanical function of limit stop of the rolling shutter.
The operation of the device 1 is easily understood from the previous description.
The device, once placed and secured through a support 2 external to the rolling shutter, will provide a roller 7 always in contact with the rolling shutter's outer surface thanks to the force exerted by the levers 4 through the springs 11.
When the user either pulls up or pulls down the rolling shutter, its outer surface will be automatically cleaned by the cleaning surface of the roller 7 always in contact with it, a contact also secured by said rubber rings 8.
Lastly, the case 10 will hide from the outside the presence of the cleaning roller 7 and will provide an alternative mechanical lock for said rolling shutter.
Making now reference to figures 5-7 of the drawings, in which the system device employed for the motorized cleaning of large size outer surfaces, like big buildings' glazed fronts, are described.
In between columns of glass panels 20 some small runners or guides 21 are employed wherein the device's guide shoes or sliders 22 run through, supported by two side supports 23 connected to the main shaft 30. The device moves along the guides 21 thanks to one or more motors 24 that through the transmission 25 causes to rotate the driving shaft 26 and consequently the pressing rollers 27. The cleaning roller 29 is supported by the main shaft 30 through small rods 28 and it is made to rotate by a motor 31 through the transmission 32. Next to the cleaning roller a magnets holding cross-bar 33 is also provided in order to attract the particles separated from the cleaning roller and to discharge the electrostatic energy, and for such reason the cross-bar is equipped at its ends with insulators 34.
Obviously, the whole device can be moved from one column of glass panels to another when it has finished to clean one column and has to go on cleaning another one, thus such movement can be made both manually at the lower or upper end of the column and through proper translatory mechanical means which can take up various shapes.
The supports 23 are made of materials that guarantee a proper electric insulation. Said supports can be opportunely manufactured in order to obtain the best mechanical, practical, and aesthetical results.
One or more motors 24 can be applied to the supports 23. Said motors, can be employed in several ways: at sight and hidden, both horizontally, than vertically, paralleling and in a right-angled position relative to said supports.
In order to guarantee the adhesion of the whole device to the surfaces to be cleaned, the sliders 22 are applied to the device's supports. Said sliders, in addition to keep the device adhering, have the function of keeping the alignment of the device relative to the guides 21 where said sliders are properly applied to them. A threaded pin 35 is applied to said sliders, at the ends said pin runs inside a guide (hole) made inside of the device's support 23. Said pin 35 is fixed to the support by putting a thrust spring between the support and the threaded part, opposite to that on which the slider is applied, through a washer 37 and a nut 38 that has the function of controlling the device's pressure over the surface to be cleaned.
Said motors 24 can indiscriminately communicate motion to said supports, through gears, pulleys, belts (e.g. cog and V belts), rollers, elastic joints, and whatever else is known to the state of the art similar or comparable and anyway suitable to motion transmission.
Said driving shafts 26 can be applied to such motors on which the rollers 27 are bushed, said rollers, kept in contact with the surface to be cleaned, allow the motion on it.
Said pressing rollers 27 can be: covered and/or coated rollers or obtained from the fittest solid material relative to the surfaces' composition on which they must guarantee a good adhesion.
The cleaning roller 29 is a very important component of this device and it must meet a certain number of requirements in order to guarantee a good operation. Particularly the device's cleaning roller 29 can be made of cylindrical brushes of the modular type (for example those better known as "flip - flap") or of its similar or comparable kind.
The material composing the bristles and the very own body of said brushes must be of electrically conductive type.
To keep the brush, made of the modules that form it, aligned a cylindrical bush is utilized, that, properly grounded at one side, has the function of discharging to the ground the electrostatic charges that can develop as a consequence of the friction between the brush's bristles and the surface to be cleaned.
Said brush designed in this fashion, exploits the physical principles for which in order to separate a solid from a solid (dirt molecules from the surface to be cleaned), the system of flotation and of the magnetic separation is used.
Making now reference to figures 8-11, wherein a device employed for the cleaning of fixed windows is described, where to each wing 39 is associated an internal cleaning roller 40 and/or an external cleaning roller 41 which can move up and down along the window being fixed to closed loop small cables 42 that can be operated through pulleys 43, one of them being associated with a driving crank 44 that could be replaced by a motorized system.
In this application made on fixed windows some grooves 46 communicating with each other from the inside towards the outside and vice versa, can be obtained from their frame 45, in order to allow the sliding of the small cables 42 or as an alternative to small rods that will function as, in the outer side, a support for said device, while in the inner side will function as a lever on which to communicate motion and thus to allow the cleaning of the exterior surface.
In the embodiments illustrated and described up to now, the device operates by moving in a vertical direction, but the invention is not at all limited to the vertical cleaning, due to the fact that the cleaning operation can also be carried out in a horizontal direction.
An example of such device equipped with horizontal motion is described in figures 12 and 13, wherein an application on sliding wings casings is shown, where the device gets integrated with the framing of the window's sliding wing 50, as illustrated in fig. 13. As a matter of fact, the sash 51 of said sliding wing 50 is associated with the cleaning roller 52 that for this reason cleans the window's outer surface of the fixed wing 53 equipped with a fixed frame 51A. At the same time, the outer surface of the sliding wing 50 gets cleaned by another cleaning roller 54 applied to a central column 55 of the frame.
Said wings 50, 53 being generally overlapped, both in the closed and in the opened position, allowing the cleaning rollers 52, 54 applied in this matter to remain always in contact with the surface to be cleaned and to rotate thanks to the motion communicated during the opening and closing of the window. The external part of the outer wing 50 of said window will be cleaned through the cleaning roller 54 applied to a central column 55 of the window's frame, which in addition to function as a support to said device will also have an aesthetic function, as reported in figures 12 and 13.
From the preceding detailed description of some embodiments, it is understood how the present invention's system is extremely versatile and can adopt many different configurations according to the kind of structure on which it must be employed.
The possible modifications, variations, and/or additions will be numerous. For example the cleaning roller could also take up other functions, such as that of washing the glasses in which case two rollers one passing on the glass after the other, a drying roller following a washing one, could be provided.
When employed on walls instead of glazed surfaces, the system could be used for painting, or also for plastering and facing, providing in this case proper devices for the feeding and distribution of the material.
All these variations, and also modifications to the support and motion mechanisms, are anyhow included in the scope of protection, as recited in the following appended claims.

Claims

A mechanical system for the cleaning and/or treatment of surfaces of building, comprising at least one pressing roller (27) and at least one cleaning roller (29) said rollers being permanently in contact with the surface to be cleaned, said rollers (27, 29) being supported and actuated by a support sliding along guides (21) fixable to the surface to be cleaned, said support being provided with electric motors (24, 31) driving both said pressing roller (27) causing the support translation and said cleaning roller (29), the support comprising sliders (22) running in said guides for guaranteeing the adhesion of the whole system to the surface, the sliders being provided with elastic means for controlling the pressure of the system over the surface, said sliders being supported by a pair of side plates (23) associated to a lever pivoted upon them in an adjustable elastic fashion, said lever being in turn connected to the cleaning roller forcing it to be permanently in contact with the surface thus ensuring self-adhesion of the system to the surface without any suspension device.
The system according to Claim 1, characterized in that the cleaning rollers comprise cylindrical brushes (29) made of an electrically conductive material and a grounded bush to discharge the electrostatic charges generated by the friction between brushes and surface to be cleaned.
The system according to Claim 1 and/or 2, characterized in that the support is equipped with a crossbar (33) to which magnets are applied to cause the separation and discharge of the particles wiped from the surface to be cleaned or collected by the brushes of the cleaning rollers.
The system according to one or more of the preceding claims, characterized in that the support is made of materials warranting an adequate electric insulation.
The system according to Claim 2, characterized in that said cleaning rollers (40, 41) are applicable to a fixed window's frame (45) and are caused to move vertically through closed loop cables (42) actuated manually or equipped with a motor, said rollers being applied on the inner surface (40) and/or on the outer surface (41) of the window.
The system according to Claim 2, characterized in that said cleaning rollers (52) are applicable fixed to the sash (51) of a sliding wing (50) window, thus with the sliding of such wing they clean the glass surfaces in contact with them.