EP1346654B1 - Helmet - Google Patents

Helmet Download PDF

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Publication number
EP1346654B1
EP1346654B1 EP03005143A EP03005143A EP1346654B1 EP 1346654 B1 EP1346654 B1 EP 1346654B1 EP 03005143 A EP03005143 A EP 03005143A EP 03005143 A EP03005143 A EP 03005143A EP 1346654 B1 EP1346654 B1 EP 1346654B1
Authority
EP
European Patent Office
Prior art keywords
shell
visor
helmet
chin
piece
Prior art date
Legal status (The legal status is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the status listed.)
Expired - Lifetime
Application number
EP03005143A
Other languages
German (de)
English (en)
French (fr)
Other versions
EP1346654A1 (en
Inventor
Antonio Cascini
Current Assignee (The listed assignees may be inaccurate. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy of the list.)
Individual
Original Assignee
Individual
Priority date (The priority date is an assumption and is not a legal conclusion. Google has not performed a legal analysis and makes no representation as to the accuracy of the date listed.)
Filing date
Publication date
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Application filed by Individual filed Critical Individual
Publication of EP1346654A1 publication Critical patent/EP1346654A1/en
Application granted granted Critical
Publication of EP1346654B1 publication Critical patent/EP1346654B1/en
Anticipated expiration legal-status Critical
Expired - Lifetime legal-status Critical Current

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Classifications

    • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A42—HEADWEAR
    • A42B—HATS; HEAD COVERINGS
    • A42B3/00—Helmets; Helmet covers ; Other protective head coverings
    • A42B3/04—Parts, details or accessories of helmets
    • A42B3/18—Face protection devices
    • A42B3/22—Visors
    • A42B3/221—Attaching visors to helmet shells, e.g. on motorcycle helmets
    • A42B3/222—Attaching visors to helmet shells, e.g. on motorcycle helmets in an articulated manner, e.g. hinge devices
    • A—HUMAN NECESSITIES
    • A42—HEADWEAR
    • A42B—HATS; HEAD COVERINGS
    • A42B3/00—Helmets; Helmet covers ; Other protective head coverings
    • A42B3/32—Collapsible helmets; Helmets made of separable parts ; Helmets with movable parts, e.g. adjustable
    • A42B3/326—Helmets with movable or separable chin or jaw guard

Definitions

  • the present invention relates to a helmet which can be effectively used in the sports sector, or in a working context, where it is required to provide users with the possibility of opening the said helmet frontally as well as to ensure easy use and uniform mechanical characteristics as regards impact resistance.
  • helmets of the kind disclosed in the present application can be found in documents FR-A 2165826, FR-A 1381674 and "RESEARCH DISCLOSURE, no. 10241, October 1972 (1972-10), page 30 XP002246657 KENNETH MASON PUBLICATIONS, HAMPSHIRE., GB ISSN: 0374-4353 page 30.
  • helmets In the sector of helmets intended for sporting or working use, for some time helmets are known where a shell is provided for covering the head, leaving the front part open, said helmets normally being known as "jet" or open-face helmets; also known are helmets where the shell has, formed as one piece therewith, an element for protecting the user's chin, i.e. a chin-piece, said helmets therefore being commonly known as full-face helmets.
  • helmets may or may not be provided with a flip-up visor which is able to protect the eyes from air currents and prevent insects or flying bodies from entering the user's eyes.
  • hybrid helmets these helmets having features which are mixture of jet helmets and full-face helmets.
  • hybrid helmets having a design which is closer to that of jet helmets there are combinations of open shells and flip-up visors normally associated with full-face helmets, while among those helmets having a design more similar to that of full-face helmets, there are helmets provided with a movable chin-piece.
  • This chin-piece may be selectively mounted by means of connecting elements or may be pivotable about the axis of rotation of the visor, so as to be more easily arranged in place and opened when stopped, as required, depending on the particular temperature, or where permitted by the type of activity being performed at a particular moment.
  • helmets which include the particularly well-known helmets of the opening type with a pivotable chin-piece, manufactured by Airoh, Bieffe and BMW, provide a degree of safety which is midway between that of jet helmets and full-face helmets, but are particularly preferred by the owners of motor-scooters because of their more practical nature, in keeping with the nature of the vehicle used by said persons.
  • the chin-piece has, on either side, connecting arms which are substantially L-shaped such that they can be hingeably mounted or joined onto the shell along the axis of rotation of the visor.
  • This chin-piece may be kept in the closed position by an engaging device which comprises at least one pressure-operated button by means of which it is possible to switch the chin-piece between the locked position, where the chin-piece is kept in rigid contact with the shell, and a free position.
  • scooters have widened the range of users of this motorcycle, resulting in the inclusion, within this sector, of users for whom the motorcycle is basically a working tool which helps save time when travelling around town, but who are not interested in the special clothing or accessories particularly important for motorcycle enthusiasts or those who regard the motorcycle as a sporting pastime and like travelling at high speed.
  • the scooter is a sort of compromise between a car and a motorcycle, which is used through necessity, since their requirement is merely that of getting from one place to another as quickly as possible, avoiding long queues of traffic, and they would be more than willing to dispense with the helmet, travelling exactly as if in a car.
  • ease of use is of fundamental importance and the maximum degree of safety offered by a closed helmet of the full-face type is not a priority.
  • the helmets with a pivotable chin-piece have frontal dimensions which are greater than those of the jet helmets with a visor or the full-face helmets, from which they are derived, owing to the extra volume due to the hinging mechanism, even where the shell has the same front cross-section.
  • This helmet since it offers the user a limited degree of comfort, will be more likely to be rejected by a person who requires a helmet for essentially casual use, even assuming the same robustness and impact resistance, and is therefore a risky investment for the manufacturer involved and associated designer.
  • these helmets have the further drawback that it is difficult to lift the visor, in particular if thermal gloves - which are normally padded - are worn, since the bottom edge of the visor adheres to the top part of the chin-piece and cannot be easily operated by the user's hands. It is known to overcome this drawback by using the chin-piece to lift the visor since the visor in fact rests on the said chin-piece. Once the visor has been raised and if it is required to protect to a certain degree at least a portion of the user's face, it is possible to lower the chin-piece with one hand, while keeping the visor raised with the other hand.
  • the visor is in some cases equipped at the bottom with a projection which can be easily located even when wearing gloves and allows the said visor to be raised.
  • this projection causes turbulence, such that the helmet has a poor efficiency from an aerodynamic point of view compared to a full-face helmet and therefore, since it produces noise during travel, the result is that the helmet is of limited interest.
  • these helmets have a further drawback consisting in the fact that, when the chin-piece is raised into the open position, the user's face is left completely without protection, so that the degree of safety offered by these helmets is substantially identical to that of jet helmets from which the respective shell is adopted.
  • a helmet is all the more safe the more easily it may be regarded as forming part of oneself; consequently, for scooter riders, a helmet is all the more safe when, for the same impact resistance during use, it can be more simply adapted to one's own requirements and to the way in which the motorcycle is used.
  • a helmet which is safe but too complicated to use is likely to try the patience of a user who will prefer, instead of this helmet, a helmet which is less safe, but easier to adapt to his/her particular requirements in given situations.
  • Such situations include in particular waiting, on a hot day, at a set of traffic lights in the middle of traffic while having to keep one's helmet on and not being able to allow fresh air circulate for a few moments, owing to the impossibility of changing the helmet quickly from a closed configuration to an open configuration or, vice versa, in order to restore the characteristic safe conditions present before stopping.
  • the object of the present invention is to provide a helmet which overcomes the drawbacks described above and which combines ease of use with the impact resistance of a known helmet of the opening type which, when stopped, allows easy and fast conversion from a closed-helmet configuration to an open-helmet configuration, so as to allow total fast opening using only one hand and, in equally rapid succession, closing, so as to allow the safe conditions to be readily restored.
  • a further object of the present invention is to provide a helmet of the opening type which has means for gripping it which are flush with the surface delimiting the outside of the shell so that the helmet itself is aerodynamically efficient and silent like a full-face helmet and so that the visor gripping means can be easily taken hold of and gripped even when wearing padded gloves.
  • a further object of the present invention is that of taking into account purchase-related factors which are not catered for in the helmet market and satisfying the increasingly pressing need to combine practicality and safety, also in order to boost the sale of products intended for a given sector of the public, for example, but not exclusively, scooter riders, and thereby be able to meet a series of requirements which at present are still outstanding, and thus provide a new and original source of economic activity able to modify the present market of helmets.
  • the present invention relates to a helmet as claimed in Claim 1 and a visor for a helmet as claimed in claim 9.
  • FIG 1 denotes in its entirety a helmet provided with a shell 10 and a visor 11 joined to it in a given manner so as to be movable with a rotational movement relative to the shell 10 about at least one axis 12 of rotation between a lowered closed position and a raised open position.
  • the visor 11 comprises a first element 13 provided with a transparent sheet 14 for protecting the eyes, which is geometrically formed as a substantially torus-like surface so as to be suitable for transmitting light rays in a neutral manner.
  • the visor 11 embraces at the front the shell 10 and is delimited at the bottom by a bottom edge 15 which has, in turn, a torus shape and forms part of the sheet 14.
  • the shell 10 has, at the front, a pair of lateral front portions 16, or cheeks, which extend symmetrically along the sides of the mouth so as to cover substantially a user's cheeks and leave only the chin portion uncovered.
  • the helmet 1 comprises, moreover, a second element 18 which can be connected laterally to the latter in a given manner by means of any locking mechanism which selectively joins the second element 18 integrally with the two lateral portions of the shell 10, and in particular with the cheeks 16.
  • each known and not illustrated locking mechanism comprises at least one pressure-operated button by means of which it is possible to switch the second element 18 between the fixed position, where the chin-piece is kept in a lowered position, in rigid contact with the shell 10, and the free position, into which the second element 18 is movable by means of a rotational movement with respect to the shell 12 about the axis 12.
  • the second element 18, together with the two cheeks 16, is able to define, when the visor 11 is lowered, and therefore when the helmet 1 is in the respective closed position, a composite member 19 which is able to protect the bottom front part of a user's face, similar to that which occurs in the case of full-face helmets, and in helmets of the opening-type which can be normally found on the market, where this function is performed by the pivotable chin-piece. Therefore, here and below the composite member 19 will be preferably indicated by the term "chin-piece" which comprises the assembly consisting of the second element 18 and the cheeks 16, whereby the second element 18 constitutes the central portion, and, below, this chin-piece will for this reason be indicated by this term and by the said reference number.
  • the central portion 18 is formed in a similar manner to the cheeks 16 and, more generally, to the shell 10, so as to provide the chin-piece 19 with an impact resistance similar to that of the shell 10. Therefore, the chin-piece 19 has as a whole an impact resistance substantially identical to that of the shell 10 both owing to its physical form and the fact that it is able to be rigidly connected to these parts, when the helmet is closed, and therefore contributes, with its resistance, to the overall strength of the said helmet 1.
  • the element 18, since it must have mechanical characteristics similar to those of the shell 10, is typically made of polycarbonate, glass fibre, carbon fibre or other similar material and with a substantially identical thickness.
  • the visor 11 and the second element 18 are connected together in a given manner and in any case so as to produce a single body which can be operationally employed during use of the said helmet 1.
  • this single body is assigned the reference number 20. Therefore, the single body 20 has a visor 11 delimited at the bottom by the toroidal edge 15 and a portion of greater thickness defined by the central portion 18 which is able to define, together with the cheeks 16, the chin-piece 19 which can be arranged facing a bottom portion of a user's face and is able to withstand impacts in a similar manner to the shell 10.
  • the central portion 18 has at the top an element 40 for joining/connection to the first element 13 or to the sheet 14.
  • This element 40 has laterally two wings 41 which are symmetrical with respect to the central portion 18 and each of which is shaped so as to match the corresponding cheek 16 so that, when the visor 11 is in the respective lowered closed position, the wing 41 is able to cover an upper portion of the cheek 16 so as to provide a typical labyrinth-type fluid sealing system 42.
  • Figure 4 shows how this sealing system 42 is formed, with which system it may or may not be possible to associate a seal 43 which is visible solely in Figure 4 and normally made of rubber material.
  • the central portion 18 moreover is delimited peripherally by an edge 44 which is substantially U-shaped and is provided with respective lateral sections 45.
  • Each lateral section 45 is formed so as to match a corresponding lateral edge 46 of the respective cheek 16 so that the central portion 18 is able to come into contact against the two cheeks 16 and in particular against the respective edges 46 so as to act as a bridge between the two lateral portions 16 of the shell 10, when the visor 11 is in the respective lowered closed position.
  • the single body 20 closes frontally the shell 10 and improves the impact resistance of the helmet 1 as a whole.
  • the present invention could also include a version of the helmet 1 (not shown) in which each cheek 16, by means of its top edge 46, would remain separated from the respective wing 41 and the aperture between the two elements would be closed by means of a seal able to prevent the through-flow of air currents and any particles of water.
  • this connecting element 40 is tapered at its ends so as to terminate with a zero height on the visor 11 at the location of the axis 12, in order to minimize the overall mass of the central portion 18.
  • the edge 44 comprises a bottom section 48 which ideally forms a continuation of the bottom edge 49 of the shell 10 so as to define, when the shell 1 is closed, a single closed contour formed as a continuous ring, a portion of which is visible in Figure 3 alone.
  • this central portion 18 of the chin-piece 19 may be gripped by means of the respective section 48 so as to perform rotation of the visor 11 about the respective axis 12. Therefore, this central portion 18 constitutes a member for gripping the single body 20, able to cause rotation thereof about the axis 12 so as to switch the helmet 1 between the respective open and closed positions. Moreover, this central portion 18, together with the visor 11, is delimited by a concave surface 21 which is adapted to match the surface 22 of the shell 10 in such a way that the surfaces 21 and 22, when the single body 20 is in the lowered closed position, are a continuation of each other so as to define an overall surface 23 of the helmet 1 which is substantially continuous. This surface 21, moreover, is delimited at the bottom by the section 48.
  • the helmet 1 solves the technical problems described above and how it combines ease of use with the capacity to withstand impacts. Moreover, incorporating together the visor 11 and the central portion 18 of the chin-piece 19, the respective lateral portions 16 of which permanently protect the side portions of the user's face, results in lightening of the chin-piece as conventionally defined in open helmets and allows a reduction in the eccentric mass of the helmet 1 in the open configuration, also during travel conditions, and maximizes the capacity of the helmet 1 to protect the user's face in the open configuration.
  • the central portion 18 can be really used as a small-size gripping member so that the helmet 1 can be easily and quickly switched from a closed configuration to an open configuration so as to allow rapid opening with one hand only and, in equally rapid succession, closing so as to allow safety conditions to be readily restored.
  • the helmet 1 is moreover as aerodynamically efficient and silent as a full-face helmet and can be easily operated even when wearing padded gloves.
  • a helmet constructed as the helmet 1 is able to take into account purchase-related factors which are currently not satisfied by the products available on the market and satisfy the increasingly pressing need to combine practicality and safety, being able to meet a series of requirements which are currently still outstanding. It is therefore able to provide a novel approach to the product for the manufacturer in question as well as suggest an original way of interpreting the helmet for motorcycles and/or uses of varying nature, being suitable for expanding the present-day market of helmets.

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  • Helmets And Other Head Coverings (AREA)
EP03005143A 2002-03-19 2003-03-07 Helmet Expired - Lifetime EP1346654B1 (en)

Applications Claiming Priority (2)

Application Number Priority Date Filing Date Title
IT2002RN000013A ITRN20020013A1 (it) 2002-03-19 2002-03-19 Casco
ITRN20020013 2002-03-19

Publications (2)

Publication Number Publication Date
EP1346654A1 EP1346654A1 (en) 2003-09-24
EP1346654B1 true EP1346654B1 (en) 2005-10-12

Family

ID=11456738

Family Applications (1)

Application Number Title Priority Date Filing Date
EP03005143A Expired - Lifetime EP1346654B1 (en) 2002-03-19 2003-03-07 Helmet

Country Status (4)

Country Link
EP (1) EP1346654B1 (it)
AT (1) ATE306203T1 (it)
DE (1) DE60301813T2 (it)
IT (1) ITRN20020013A1 (it)

Families Citing this family (1)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
ITMI20080784A1 (it) * 2008-04-29 2009-10-30 Givi Srl Casco con protezione integrata nella visiera

Family Cites Families (6)

* Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party
Publication number Priority date Publication date Assignee Title
FR1381674A (fr) * 1964-01-03 1964-12-14 Casque de protection contre les chocs et le feu
FR2165826A1 (it) * 1971-12-31 1973-08-10 Boeri Sport Fratelli Boe
DE7224798U (de) * 1972-07-03 1972-09-28 Roemer H 2-Schalen-Sporthelm mit fest verankertem Drehgelenk
FR2312979A1 (fr) * 1975-04-07 1976-12-31 Gallet Adrien Casque pour motocyclistes, cyclomotoristes et similaires
DE2846636C3 (de) * 1978-10-26 1981-04-02 Schuberth-Werk Gmbh & Co Kg, 3300 Braunschweig Integralhelm
DE8317310U1 (de) * 1983-06-14 1983-10-27 Hans Römer GmbH + Co, 7910 Neu-Ulm Schutzhelm

Also Published As

Publication number Publication date
ITRN20020013A1 (it) 2003-09-19
ATE306203T1 (de) 2005-10-15
DE60301813T2 (de) 2006-06-29
EP1346654A1 (en) 2003-09-24
ITRN20020013A0 (it) 2002-03-19
DE60301813D1 (de) 2006-02-23

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