JP2008049144A - Pillow - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pillow which excels in diversity of a configuration according to the demand of a user, moldability to a required configuration, shape retainability, and flexibility. <P>SOLUTION: In a pillow 1 which is composed of a bag 10 and a large number of chips 22 filling this bag 10, a chip connection 25 is formed by connecting a plurality of chips 22 with a linear body consisting of a thread or a string with rubber-like elasticity and passing through the through holes of the chips. A plurality of chip connections 25 fill the bag 10. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2008,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to a pillow that provides a comfortable sleep.

  Pillows are one of the main beddings that are indispensable. In order to obtain a comfortable sleep, the shape of the pillow is one of the particularly important factors. There are various types of pillow users, from infants to the elderly, by gender, healthy people, sick people, etc. The shape of the pillow adapted to the user varies greatly from person to person. The shape of the pillow depends on the size of the user's head and neck, the posture of the body during sleep, the position of the head relative to the pillow, and the like. The posture of the body and the position of the head change by turning over. Therefore, the shape of the pillow can be varied in various ways according to the user's situation, ease of molding that can be easily molded into the required shape, and maintainability of the shape that the formed shape does not easily collapse Is desired.

  Conventionally, in order to obtain a comfortable sleep, various ideas have been made on the shape of the pillow, the filling material packed in the bag, and the like. For example, there is a pillow in which a large number of wooden balls are filled in a bag, and this pillow can obtain a shiatsu effect by the wooden balls (for example, Patent Document 1). Moreover, the wooden ball is provided with a through hole to improve air circulation so that heat is not trapped inside the pillow. However, the wooden balls are not constrained and move freely, so they are easily deformed and the shape is not easily maintained.

  In addition, there is a pillow in which a plurality of beads are connected to a through hole of a wooden ball to form a rosary shape, and then the rosary wooden ball is attached in a spiral shape from the center of the upper surface of the cushion member to cover the upper surface of the cushion member. Yes (see, for example, Patent Document 1). Since the wooden ball is attached in a spiral shape only to the central portion of the upper surface of the cushion member, an inexpensive pillow capable of obtaining a shiatsu effect can be provided. However, since the wooden ball is attached only to the central portion of the upper surface of the cushion member, the shape of the pillow depends on the shape of the cushion member, and lacks the moldability and ease of molding of various shapes.

  Furthermore, the head seat part located in the approximate center part of the pillow, and the side edge part which the head part is not mounted in contact with this head seat part, and the filling material contained by the side edge part is the said head part. There is a pillow that adjusts the height and hardness of the head seat by being brought close to the head (for example, see Patent Document 2). Since this pillow can be adjusted to a height and hardness suitable for the user, it can maintain a good sleep state. However, in order to adjust the height of the pillow, the filling contained in the side edge is brought to the head, and there is a problem that the moldability of various shapes is lacking. Furthermore, if the pillow is made taller, the pillow becomes harder, so the firmness of the pillow depends on the height of the pillow. Therefore, a flexible pillow could not be obtained regardless of the shape and height of the pillow.

As described above, there is no conventional pillow that sufficiently satisfies all of the variety of shapes, the ease of forming, and the maintainability of shapes according to the user's situation. In addition, a pillow having the flexibility desired by the user could not be obtained regardless of the shape and height of the pillow.
JP 2001-145549 A (paragraph [0002] and FIG. 12; second page claim 1, FIG. 4) JP 2002-65432 A (refer to claim 2, FIG. 1; paragraph [0016] and FIG. 2 on the second page)

  This invention makes it the subject to provide the pillow excellent in the diversity of the shape according to a user's condition, the ease of shaping | molding, the maintainability of a shape, and a softness | flexibility.

  This invention solves the said subject, The pillow of this invention is the rubber-like elastic which a some chip | tip penetrates this through hole in the pillow which consists of a bag and many chips with which this bag was filled. A chip connecting body is formed by connecting with a linear body made of a thread or string having a plurality of chip connecting bodies, and a plurality of chip connecting bodies are filled in the bag.

  In the pillow according to the present invention, the chip connecting body is configured by connecting a plurality of chips with a linear body having rubber-like elasticity. Rubber-like elasticity is the elasticity exhibited by rubber and similar materials, and rubber-like elastic materials undergo considerable deformation under small stress and quickly return to their original shape from that deformation. Therefore, when the pillow user uses his hand or moves his head to adjust the shape of the pillow according to the usage situation, the chip connector expands, contracts, or moves, so the pillow shape can be any Can be easily changed to. Even if the shape changes, since the chips are connected by a linear body, the shape does not easily collapse. Further, the chip coupling body expands, contracts, and moves according to changes in the load position and load direction of the weight of the neck and head, and the chip coupling body is not fixed, so that the user can always obtain a soft feel. .

  FIG. 1 shows the best mode of the present invention, and is a perspective view of a pillow in which a part of the surface of the pillow is removed to show a filler. The pillow 1 mainly includes a bag 10, a filler 20, and a bag sealing means 14.

  The bag 10 is made of cloth, and cotton, silk, hemp, synthetic fibers, etc. are used as the material of the cloth, and cotton yarn spinning is suitable. An opening 12 that can be opened and closed is provided on the side surface of the bag 10. A slide fastener is attached to the opening 12 as the bag sealing means 14. The bag sealing means 14 may be a touch-close type fastener, a belt with a stopper, or a simple string. When the opening 12 of the pillow 1 can be opened and closed, the filler 20 can be easily increased / decreased and replaced according to the user's request or preference. Also, the filler 20 can be removed and exposed to sunlight or washed. The pillow is therefore hygienic and withstands long-term use.

  The filler 20 includes a chip coupling body 25 in which a plurality of chips 22 are coupled. The shape of the chip 22 is a rotating body. The tip 22 has, for example, a spherical tip 22a in FIG. 2 (a), an ellipsoidal tip 22b in FIG. 2 (b), a (c) barrel tip 22c, and (d) a short cylindrical tip. Chip. Both ends of the short cylindrical tip 22d are hemispherical to improve the moldability of the pillow. The spherical tip 22a, the ellipsoidal tip 22b of (b) and the (c) barrel tip 22c have good moldability, and the short cylindrical tip 22d is not easily deformed and has good shape maintainability. The spherical tip 22a and the barrel tip 22c have a diameter of about 4 to 20 mm, and the ellipsoidal tip 22b has a major axis of about 5 to 20 mm. The short cylindrical tip 22d has a diameter of about 5 to 10 mm and a length of about 10 to 20 mm. Each chip 22 is provided with a through hole 23 passing through the center thereof, and the diameter of the through hole 23 is determined by the diameter or short diameter of the chip 22 and is about 1 to 5 mm. Further, the chip may be a polyhedron, and a regular dodecahedron or regular icosahedron whose shape is close to a sphere is particularly preferable. In the case of these regular polyhedrons, the shape is not easily deformed and the shape maintainability is good.

  The chip 22 is made of wood or synthetic resin. As the wood, for example, firewood, pine, cedar, firewood, hiba, poplar, and ho are used. When the chip 22 is made of wood, the fragrance peculiar to wood slightly smells out of the pillow, and a healing effect can be obtained. As the synthetic resin, for example, polypropylene, polyethylene, polystyrene, or the like is used. In order to improve the formability of the pillow and to reduce annoying frictional noise, it is desirable to make the surface of the tip 22 as smooth as possible.

  The chip connecting body 25 is configured such that a thread or string-like linear body 28 is passed through each through hole 23 of the chip 22, and both ends of the linear body 28 are prevented from being detached. I try not to come off. The linear body 28 is made of a thread or string having rubber-like elasticity. The elongation of the linear body is preferably 1% or more. When the elongation is less than 1%, it is difficult to expand, contract, and move the chip connector, and the shape diversity and ease of molding of the pillow cannot be fully exhibited, and the flexibility is lowered.

  As the material of the linear body, for example, synthetic fiber, synthetic rubber, or natural rubber is used. As the synthetic fiber, for example, polyurethane, polyamide, and other synthetic fibers are used. Further, as the synthetic rubber, for example, polyurethane rubber, chloroprene rubber, nitrile rubber, and other synthetic rubbers are used. It is desirable to coat the outer peripheral surface of these materials with knitting yarn. Although the elongation of the linear body is reduced by the coating, the strength can be increased. The elongation of the linear body itself is, for example, 100 to 200% in the case of polyurethane rubber covered with knitting yarn. However, the weight or movement of the neck or head applied to the pillow, or the elongation when the chip connected body expands, contracts, or moves due to the force when adjusting the shape of the pillow is about 1 to 5%.

  The diameter of the linear body 28 is determined by the diameter of the through hole 23 of the chip 22 to be connected, and is about 0.7 to 4 mm. The unloaded gap between adjacent chips 22 connected by the linear body 28 is about 0 to 0.5 mm. However, the non-zero gap is the average of the gaps between adjacent chips over the entire length of the chip connected body. In the case of the gap 0, the adjacent chips are in light contact with each other. If the gap is too large, the linear body may be entangled with other linear bodies, and the expansion, contraction, and movement of the chip coupling body may be hindered. In the case of the gap 0, the length of the linear body and the length of the chip coupling body are substantially equal, and when there is a gap, the linear body 28 is slightly longer than the chip coupling body 25 by the gap. The length of the chip coupling body 25 is, for example, about 30 to 120 cm. The number of chips to be connected depends on the length of the chip connector, the diameter or length of the chip.

  The chip coupling body 25 can be composed of a plurality of types of chips 22 that differ in at least one of shape and size. 3A shows an example in which spherical tips 22a having the same diameter are connected, FIG. 3B shows an example in which two spherical tips 22a having different diameters are connected alternately, and FIG. 3C shows a spherical tip 22a and an ellipsoid. (D) shows an example in which spherical tips 22a and short cylindrical tips 22d are alternately connected. 3B to 3D, two types of chips 22 having different dimensions or shapes are connected, but three or more types may be connected.

  FIG. 4 shows an example of a chip coupling body 26 in which spherical chips 22a having the same diameter are coupled in a loop shape. FIG. 4 shows a state where the chip coupling body in which the spherical chip 22a is passed through the linear body 28 without a gap is suspended. The linear body 28 is extended by the weight of the spherical tip 22a in a suspended state, and is exposed from the uppermost spherical tip 22a. In addition to the one shown in FIG. 4, a chip coupling body 25 including two or more types of chips 22 having at least one of different shapes and dimensions may be coupled in a loop shape. When the loop is formed, the movement of the chip is easily suppressed in the chip connected body. As a result, the maintainability of the shape is improved as compared with the string-like chip connector. The length of the loop-shaped chip coupling body (the length obtained by folding the linear chip coupling body into a loop) is, for example, 15 to 60 cm.

  The pillow can be filled into the bag 10 such that a plurality of chip coupling bodies 25 having various lengths and chip 22 shapes and diameters are mixed at random. For example, by combining chip connected bodies different in length from 1 to 5 kinds of chip connected bodies, 1 to 8 kinds of chip diameters, and 1 to 3 kinds of chips, various chip connected bodies are randomly and bags 10. To fill. By doing so, it becomes easy to adjust the moldability of various shapes of the pillow, ease of molding, shape maintainability, hardness (or softness), touch comfort, breathability, and the like. Moreover, an appropriate pillow can be provided to a wide range of people from infants to elderly people or sick people, regardless of gender. The pillow 1 shown in FIG. 1 has a chip shape of a sphere, and a plurality of chip connecting bodies 25 having various lengths of chip connecting bodies 25 and different diameters of the chips 22 are randomly mixed in the bag 10. A filled example is shown.

  The filling amount of the chip connector is determined by the pillow height suitable for the pillow user. The height of the pillow is about 3 to 8 cm, and the higher the height of the pillow, the more it is filled. If the chip assembly is packed without gaps, the moldability deteriorates, so the gaps are filled with some margin. The ratio (filling rate) of the whole volume of the chip assembly 25 filled to the volume of the bag 10 is about 80 to 95%.

  In order to strengthen the massage effect, a chip connected body composed of a large-diameter chip of about 10 to 15 mm is filled. When filling a chip connected body composed of a large-diameter chip, a medium-diameter chip, and a small-diameter chip so as to be mixed randomly, the chip-linked body of the large-diameter chip is filled more than the chip-linked body of the medium-diameter chip. While the pillow is used for a long period of time, the medium- and small-diameter chips may gradually sink, and the chip assembly may be layered in the order of large, medium and small-diameter chips. In such a case, many large-diameter tips may hit the neck and head with a hard and uneven feeling and cause pain. In this case, when the pillow is turned upside down, the upper part becomes a medium and small-diameter chip, and the massage effect is slightly reduced, but the pillow becomes soft and can relieve pain.

  In the pillow 1 configured as described above, when changing the shape of the pillow by increasing the height of the pillow 1, press the front and rear surfaces of the pillow with both hands and press the pillow in the vertical (neck) direction and both sides. Narrowing the pillow vertically and horizontally increases the height of the pillow. When lowering the height of the pillow, the pillow 1 is pressed downward by hand. If the desired height cannot be obtained, the above operation is repeated until the desired height is reached.

  Also, when changing the shape of the pillow by adjusting the height of the head support part 4 and the neck support part 6 in the supine posture, the pillow is used at the center of the pillow 1 (the center of the pillow in the vertical and horizontal directions). Place the person's back head and shake or turn his / her neck from side to side. As a result, as shown in FIG. 5, the portions where the head portion and the neck portion are in contact with each other are recessed to change the shape, and the head support portion 4 and the neck portion support portion 6 are formed. When adjusting the height of the head support part 4 and the neck support part 6, it is performed in the same manner as the adjustment of the pillow by the support parts 4 and 6, respectively. Also in the horizontal posture, the head support portion 4 and the neck support portion 6 are formed in the same manner as described above, and the height is adjusted.

  The bag is 33 cm long, 48 cm wide and 6 cm high. The linear body is a rubber string in which polyurethane rubber is covered with a polyester knitting yarn. The rubber string is one type having a diameter of 1.2 mm and a length of 60 cm. The stretch of the rubber cord is 100%. The tip is made of smoke and is of a spherical shape with a diameter of 12 mm. For each rubber string, 57 chips were passed through the entire length of the rubber string to prepare 80 chip connected bodies. These chip assemblies were mixed and filled into a bag. The filling rate was 85%.

The above-mentioned pillow of the present invention, a commercially available low-resilience urethane pillow, a variety of shapes, ease of molding, maintainability of shape, and flexibility as a standard for evaluating buckwheat pillows that have been widely used, A feather pillow and a bead pillow were comparatively tested. The results are shown in Table 1. It became clear that the pillow of Example 1 was better than the standard buckwheat pillow and the commercially available pillow other than the buckwheat pillow in all items.

The bag is the same as in Example 1. The tip is smoked and spherical. There are seven types of diameters ranging from 4 to 15 mm. The linear body is the same rubber string as that of the first embodiment, and has three types of lengths of 30, 60, and 120 cm. The elongation of the rubber string is 100%. For each rubber string, a chip was passed through the length of the rubber string to create a chip assembly. A total of 106 chip assemblies of 21 types with 7 types of tip diameters and 3 types of rubber cord lengths were produced. These chip assemblies were randomly mixed and filled into a bag. The filling rate was 85%. Table 2 shows combinations of the chip and the linear body.

  The pillows of the present invention are manufactured using the conventional buckwheat pillow as a reference for various items of shape diversity, ease of molding, shape maintenance, and flexibility. Rebound urethane pillows, feather pillows, and bead pillows were comparatively tested. The results are shown in Table 1. It became clear that the pillow of Example 2 was superior to the standard buckwheat pillow in all items, and could be compared to a commercially available pillow other than buckwheat.

  The bag and the chip connector are the same as those in the second embodiment. However, the chip connection body was formed in a loop shape, mixed at random, and filled into a bag. The length of the loop is 15, 30, and 60 cm. The filling rate was 85%.

  The pillow produced as described above was subjected to a comparative test with a conventional pillow in terms of shape diversity, ease of molding, shape maintenance, and flexibility. The results are shown in Table 1. It became clear that the pillow of Example 3 was superior to the standard buckwheat pillow in all items, and could be compared to a commercially available pillow other than the buckwheat pillow.

  The present invention is not limited to the above embodiment. For example, a chip coupling body made of wood chips and a chip coupling body made of synthetic resin chips may be mixed and filled. Alternatively, an aromatic material such as lavender, rose, or mugwort may be put in a cloth bag and inserted between the filled chip assemblies. Thereby, the aromatherapy effect can be obtained.

It is the perspective view of the pillow of this invention which removed a part of surface of the pillow, and showed the filler. It is drawing which shows the example of various chips | tips. It is some drawings of a chip | tip coupling body which shows the example of various chip | tip coupling bodies. It is a front view which shows an example of a loop-shaped chip | tip coupling body. It is a perspective view which shows an example of the pillow after shaping | molding.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Pillow 4 Head support part 6 Neck support part 10 Bag 12 Bag opening part 14 Bag sealing means 20 Filler 22 Chip 23 Through-hole 25 Chip connection body 26 Loop-shaped chip connection body 28 Linear body

Claims (4)

  In a pillow consisting of a bag and a large number of chips filled in the bag, a plurality of chips are connected by a linear body made of rubber-like elastic thread or string penetrating through the through-hole to form a chip connection body. A pillow comprising a plurality of the chip connecting bodies filled in the bag.   The pillow according to claim 1, wherein the linear body has an elongation of 1% or more.   The chip connection body has a plurality of types of at least one of the length of the linear body and the diameter of the chip, and the chip connection body is filled in the bag so as to be mixed at random. The listed pillow.   The pillow according to any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the chip connector is formed in a loop shape.

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