GB2297061A - Pre creased foldable stationery. - Google Patents

Abstract

A sheet which is pre-creased for folding is described, particularly useful for pocket maps, instruction sheets or the like. The sheet (1) folds from a large flat to a small square form via a series of parallel ridge and valley folds on a square/diagonal array. An elongate sheet of a given width can be folded to a square of diagonal half that width. Stubs or card end plates (2) may be attached to the sheet (1) to facilitate its manipulation.

Description

FOLDABLE SHEET DISPLAY ITEMS This invention relates to foldable sheet display items.

For many purposes, sheets of material are a useful display medium. In order that the sheet can be viewed, it needs to be relatively flat, but this is inconvenient for storage, for example in a pocket. In order to store the sheet it may accordingly be folded up.

Numerous ways of folding sheets are known, but many of them are not conducive to easy manipulation. In particular, if a sheet needs to be viewed many times, it is highly desirable that once unfolded, when refolded it folds back into the same folding pattern as it had originally. If it does not, there is a tendency for the stress at the creases formed by folding to exceed the strength of the material itself leading to breakage, initially cracks but subsequently tearing and disintegration of the original sheet. While this may not matter for wholly ephemeral material, it is tiresome in the case of reference material which needs to be looked at many times, for example a map, timetable or set of instructions.

Numerous attempts have been made to solve such problems and attention is directed for example to the disclosures of United States specifications 1687304, 2118964 and 4477254, German patent specification 835219, French specification 2168637, British specifications 2173448, 2254827 and 2262475 and European specification 0288472.

A classic approach well illustrated by the above specifications is to provide a sheet of material with two sets of zigzag folds, a first set folding the sheet in one direction and the second set folding it in the transverse direction to the first. This is not always as easy to manipulate as is desirable, though items made in accordance with the disclosures of European specification 0288472 have enjoyed considerable commercial success.

We have now found that it is possible, using a different folding configuration from zigzag folds, to produce folded sheets of material for information display purposes and the like which are easy to use, have an attractive appearance and which can be unfolded and refolded satisfactorily many times.

According to a first feature of the present invention there is provided a sheet of material which is unfoldable from a folded configuration in which all parts of the sheet remote from fold lines therein lie in parallel planes, and which is substantially flat when unfolded, having three sets of intersecting folds in it, the creases of the folds being substantially permanent, each set comprising a plurality of substantially parallel and equidistant folds which, when the unfolded sheet is viewed from one side thereof, consist of a first and second set of mutually perpendicular ridge folds which divide the central area of the sheet into substantially square segments and a third set of valley folds which equally bisect the points of intersection of the first and second set of folds, the shape of the sheet being such that two opposing edges of the sheet pass through points which lie on a line substantially perpendicular to the third set of folds, the maximum distance between these two opposing edges being twice the length of the diagonal of a square segment.

In accordance with a second feature of the invention, there is provided an elongate precreased sheet foldable to compact form along the creases wherein viewed from one side of the sheet the creases form a set of equispaced parallel ridge folds substantially transverse to the length of the sheet and two sets of mutually orthogonal equispaced parallel valley folds, the intersections of the valley folds lying on the ridge folds.

In either case, folding and unfolding the sheet of material may be materially facilitated by the fixing, to two spaced points on the sheet, a pair of tabs, usually of relatively thicker material than the material from which the sheet is made. Such tabs are normally, for the sake of convenience, affixed, but it is envisaged that as an alternative, for example if the sheet were made of plastics, that parts of the sheet could simply be thicker than other parts.

Sheets in accordance with the invention may be folded from a relatively flat spread out configuration to a compact square configuration with ease, and then unfolded to substantially flat form again without difficulty.

While both sides of the sheet material may have display material thereon, usually printed material.

The sheets in accordance with the present invention may be produced at any convenient size. The folding pattern is repetitive and thus the overall size may vary depending upon how many repetitions of the folding pattern there are. Generally speaking, the number of repetitions of the folding pattern will be a small number, usually from two to five.

The invention is illustrated by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawing in which a foldable map or plan or the like is shown in flattened out condition.

Referring to the drawing, a foldable display item such as a map is shown in unfolded condition. The map is a sheet of paper 1 printed on one or both sides. Two tabs 2 are attached to the underside of the sheet as shown in the drawing, these tabs being made of relatively thicker card, plastics or the like.

As viewed in the drawing, the sheet has a number of foldable crease lines on it. In order that these can be seen in the drawing, they have been indicated by lines, but of course it should be appreciated that these are barely perceptible when the sheet is covered with printing, the printing being omitted on the drawing in order that the folding pattern can be seen.

As shown in the drawing, all of the continuous diagonal lines, i.e. those running North-East South-West and South-East North-West are valley folds. In contrast, the seven fold lines indicated in dashed lines and running North South, or vertically as the drawing is viewed are all ridge folds.

As can be clearly seen from the diagrammatic representation in the accompanying drawing, the pattern of fold lines is a repeating pattern. As shown in the drawing it can be seen to consist of three repeats identified as A, B and C. A smaller item could have just one section A between the two effectively isosceles right-angled triangled sections either end of the repeating pattern sections A, B, C. A larger one would have more.

The item shown in the drawing may be folded up to a relatively small configuration simply by moving the two tabs 2 towards one another. The paper sheet 1 folds to a compact square configuration between the two then parallel cards 2. On moving the two cards apart again, the sheet unfolds to the configuration shown. This can be done many times before, inevitably, repeated flexure of the material of which the sheet 1 is made finally causes fatigue, cracking and tearing along the fold lines.

The drawing has no scale. A convenient size for each of tabs 2 is the approximate size of a credit card, but smaller or larger versions may be made if desired.

The display items according to the present invention are conveniently manufactured in three stages. First the sheet is printed as desired, then folded, and then the two tabs adhered. It may be convenient, in order to use conventional paper handling apparatus in printing machines, to print a somewhat larger sheet flat and then guillotine the corners off to give a sheet 1 of the shape shown.

Folding may be carried out by hand to form the ridge and valley folds in the sheet. Alternatively, the sheet may have fold lines impressed upon it for example by being placed under pressure between two platens each of which has raised ridges corresponding to grooves in the other.

After pressing a sheet in this way fold lines are embossed even and though they may not be continuous, for example near the intersections with other fold lines, they will enable the sheet to be easily folded to its compact square form which can then be compressed as a whole to fix the fold lines and complete any discontinuities thereof. The tabs 2 can then be applied e.g. with adhesive. A further alternative is to perforate the sheet e.g. with lines of tiny holes or slots or cuts so as to generate lines of weakness which can then be fixed to form the folds.

The tabs 2 are shown with an extending portion but they can be coextensive with the end flat diamond shaped section of the sheet 1 or indeed slightly larger or slightly smaller than that.

Claims (7)

1. A sheet of material, which is unfoldable from a folded configuration in which all parts of the sheet remote from fold lines therein lie in parallel planes, and which is substantially flat when unfolded, having three sets of intersecting folds in it, the creases of the folds being substantially permanent, each set comprising a plurality of substantially parallel and equidistant folds which, when the unfolded sheet is viewed from one side thereof, consist of a first and second set of mutually perpendicular ridge folds which divide the central area of the sheet into substantially square segments and a third set of valley folds which equally bisect the points of intersection of the first and second set of folds, the shape of the sheet being such that two opposing edges of the sheet pass through points which lie on a line substantially perpendicular to the third set of folds, the maximum distance between these two opposing edges being twice the length of the diagonal of a square segment.

2. A sheet of material as claimed in Claim 1 the sheet having at least two substantially opposite tabs integral therewith and/or attached thereto.

3. A sheet of material as claimed in Claim 2 wherein the opposing tabs are provided with holding means adapted to hold the opposing tabs together when the sheet is folded.

4. A sheet of material as claimed in any preceding Claim wherein the sheet and/or tabs have printed material on at least one surface thereof.

5. An elongate precreased sheet foldable to compact form along the creases wherein viewed from one side of the sheet the creases form a set of equispaced parallel ridge folds substantially transverse to the length of the sheet and two sets of mutually orthogonal equispaced parallel valley folds, the intersections of the valley folds lying on the ridge folds.

6. A sheet according to claim 5 and having a handling tab of material stiffer than the material of the sheet attached to each end of the sheet.

7. A sheet according to claim 5 or 6 wherein at least the one side bears intelligible printed material.