US3887076A

US3887076A - Document filing rack

Info

Publication number: US3887076A
Application number: US340676A
Authority: US
Inventors: Mogens Drost Larsen
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1972-03-15
Filing date: 1973-03-13
Publication date: 1975-06-03
Anticipated expiration: 1992-06-03
Also published as: FR2176414A5; DE2312403A1; NL7303471A; DE2312403C2; GB1412880A; JPS4948415A

Abstract

A document filing rack comprising a plurality of wall forming elements built together into a unit so as to form a plurality of compartments having top and bottom walls and inclined side walls, each compartment being accessible for insertion of documents from at least one side in a direction parallel to all of said walls and each bottom wall being substantially perpendicular to the adjacent side walls.

Description

United States Patent 1 91 1111 3,887,076

Larsen 1 June 3, 1975 [54] DOCUMENT FILING RACK 1,966,555 7/1934 be Febure 211/10 I761 Inventor: s Teslvaerksvei 5:333:16? 311312 1331531111... 351 1111 22, 314-4450 Jydemp, Denmark 2,902,166 9/1959 Bahr 211/11 A l. N .1340 676 [21] pp 0 Primary Examiner-Ramon S. Britts [30] Foreign Application Priority Data Mar. 15. 1972 Denmark 1208/72 BSTRACT A document filing rack comprising a plurality of wall forming elements built together into a unit so as to form a plurality of compartments having top and bottom walls and inclined side walls, each compartment being accessible for insertion of documents from at least one side in a direction parallel to all of said walls and each bottom wall being substantially perpendicu- [52] US. Cl 211/10; 211/50 [51] Int. Cl. A471 5/00; B42f 17/00 [58] Field of Search 211/10, 11, 55, 128, 50, 211/133, 130, 132, 40; 312/198, 117, 126,

[56] References Cited 1 t th d t (1 1| UNITED STATES PATENTS 6 a lace e s 380,960 4/1888 Walker 312/1 ll X 3 Claims, 7 Drawing Figures DOCUMENT FILING RACK Booklets, periodicals, papers, pamphlets, single sheets of paper and similar information carriers, in the following described jointly as documents, cannot stand upright unless they are supported on both sides. If documents are stacked it will be difficult to extract a single sheet without causing disorder to the rest, and likewise it will be difficult to insert a document in its proper place in a stack.

This invention relates to a document filing rack which comprises a plurality of wall-forming elements built together into a unit so as to form a plurality of compartments of rectangular cross-section and disposed in side-by-side relationship, and it has been the aim to provide a filing rack in which documents can be filed in an orderly manner and so that single documents can be readily withdrawn and re-filed.

This aim has been accomplished by providing the rack with inclined side walls, since documents leaning against a suitably inclined support face and supported on a base perpendicular to the support face will not turn over, bend or get creased. Even single sheets may be deposited alone or between other documents without difficulty. When the support face forms a suitable angle to the vertical plane, which, is an angle of from to 30, preferably about the documents of a stack will abut on each other with so little weight that a single paper can readily be withdrawn from or inserted between the others. Also thick books and letter files may be stored in this filing rack without risk of being pulled awry. The filing rack is also well suited for the storing of gramophone records.

A very simple and cheap embodiment of the filing rack comprises two stepped plates joined together by partition walls, and a construction where one or more recesses are provided in each of the lower corner regions and the partition walls are formed by plates provided with projections extending into the said recesses and abutting on one side of a step makes it possible to dismantle the rack so that the requirement of space during storage and shipment has been substantially reduced. The dismantling and assembly of the rack can be performed without the use of tools. Increased rigid ity of the disconnectable structure has been obtained by bending the extreme end of each projection to a right angle to form a flange abutting on the side of an adjacent step.

In an embodiment of the document filing rack built op of identical plate sections the sections are bent to Z-shape and detachably secured together. This construction makes it possible to stack the dismantled sections in a very compact form. A very simple manner of coupling the sections together without the use of tools has been achieved by providing the extreme end of each Z-shaped plate section with one or more outwardly directed webs bent to right angles and providing the central wall adjacent to each end on the surface facing away from the adjacent end plate with one or more pockets for receiving the web or webs of a neigh bouring section, and by forming the web or webs as projections on a narrow end strip bent at right angles to each end plate the rigidity of the structure is further increased. A particularly simple construction has been obtained by forming the pockets by punching and stamping strips of the central wall material and by making the end sections L-shaped.

To impart still further rigidity to the rack may be introduced a stiffening element adapted to be secured on one side of the rack so as to extend along the longest diagonal of the parallelogram formed by the rack. This element can be transferred from one side of the rack to the other so that the support plates may be inclined to the left or to the right as desired.

By disposing the uppermost corner of each compartment substantially vertically above the diametrically opposed lowermost corner of the same compartment it has been made possible to superimpose a plurality of racks without shifting the projection of the geometrical point of gravity on the horizontal support surface.

The invention will be explained here in greater detail and with reference to the drawing, in which FIG. 1 presents a perspective rear view of an embodiment of the document filing rack according to the invention,

FIGS. 2a, 2b and 2c show on a larger scale vertical sections through various parts of another embodiment of the document filing rack according to the invention,

FIG. 3 shows in perspective a third embodiment of the document filing rack according to the invention in which the intermediate section and an end section have been drawn apart from the other sections,

FIG. 4 shows on a larger scale the part of a plate section encircled by the dotted line in FIG. 3, and

FIG. 5 is a perspective view of a larger filing rack arrangement comprising superimposed rows of compartments.

The document filing rack shown in FIG. 1 consists of two identical stepped plates 1 and 2 forming respectively the bottom and the top of the rack. Each step is formed by a wide plate section 3 and perpendicular thereto a narrow plate section 4. The widths of these plate sections are so adapted to one another that when the rack is placed on a horizontal surface resting on the corner edges between the plate sections, the sections form an angle of about 15 to the horizontal and the vertical plane respectively. The bottom member I and the top member 2 are joined together by a plurality of plates 5 forming side walls and partition walls of the filing rack. Each plate 5 is parallel to and in plane engagement with the surface of the narrow side 4 of a step of both the bottom member 1 and the top member 2 and is secured to the said sides in any suitable manner, for instance by spot welding.

Each pair of step members 3 with the adjoining partition walls 5 thus forms an open compartment, the slight inclination of which makes it very suitable for storage of documents of every type, including thin and flexible papers such as single sheets, because they are supported by the lower step member 3 and leaning on a partition wall 5, in FIG. I the left one. Because the support face 3 is disposed at right angles to the side support face 5, also thick books and letter files can be stored in the rack without being pulled awry.

To stiffen the rack FIG. 1 indicates a diagonal stiffening member 6 consisting of a round bar the ends of which have been bent to form hooks to be carried through holes 7 in the side walls 5 and the sides 4 of the steps at the extreme diagonally opposed corners of the rack. When this stiffening member has been mounted the filing rack will be accessible for insertion and withdrawal of documents from one side only. In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1 the rack is viewed from the rear and the compartments are inclined towards right.

If they are desired to be inclined towards left the stiffening member 6 may simply be transferred to the other side where holes 7 are likewise provided for receiving the hooked ends of the bar.

When the proportion between height, width and inclination of the individual compartments into which the rack is divided is selected so that the uppermost corner of each compartment is disposed vertically above the diametrically opposed lowermost corner of the same compartment, several racks can be stacked on top of each other without getting outside the vertical defining surfaces through the extreme corner edges of the bottom support. An example of such an arrangement is shown in FIG. 5, where the rack is mounted in a frame 15.

FIGS. 2a, 2b and 2c present sections through various corner regions of an embodiment of the document filing rack according to the invention which can be dismantled and thus requires less space when stored or shipped. FIG. 2 uses the

same designations

3, 4 and for respectively the wide step sections 3, the narrow step sections 4 and the side walls 5 as in FIG. I, and supposing the whole rack to be placed in the same way as in FIG. 1, FIG. 2a will be a vertical section through the left hand top corner region, FIG. 2b a vertical section through any one of the upper corner regions of two adjacent compartments and FIG. 20 a vertical section through the right hand top corner region of the rack.

The left hand side wall 5 shown in FIG. 2a is provided with two or more wide projections 8 extending upwards from the upper edge 9 of the wall through corresponding recesses 10 in the step section 3 at the extreme end thereof and adjacent to the narrow step section 4. To retain the projections 8 in plane engagement with the step section 4 the latter is provided with a hooked extension the end portion 11 of which extends parallel to the step section 4 and is spaced therefrom by a distance which is but slightly greater than the thickness of the side wall 5. Thus the side wall 5 has been fixed in a position relatively to the upper step section 3 which is substantially perpendicular thereto.

Similarly the right hand side wall 5 has been fixed relatively to the right hand top step 3 as shown in FIG. 2c by providing the outermost step section 4 with an extension ll' defining together with the step section 4 a narrow channel for receiving projections 8 on the side wall 5 which extend into holes 10' in the bottom of the channel.

Also the inner partition walls, here designated 5', are provided with projections 12 extending upwards from the upper edge 9' through recesses 13 in the corner region between the

adjoining step sections

3 and 4. Because the extension of the recess 13 into the step section 3 is but slightly greater than the thickness of the partition wall 5', the projections 12 will be held in plane engagement with the step section 4 and thus contribute to stiffening the whole rack against its innate tendency to collaps caused by the inclination. The stiffening effect has been further improved by the bending of the extreme ends 14 of the projections 12 to right angles and into engagement with the step section 3.

At their lower ends the side walls 5 and the partition walls 5' are connected to the base plate 1 in the same way as shown and described above in respect of the upper ends. Thus the whole document filing rack can be dismantled and reassembled without the use of any tools whatsoever.

The embodiment of the filing rack according to the invention illustrated by FIG. 3 is composed of a plurality of intermediate sections 16 comprising plates bent to Z-shape and two end sections 17 consisting of plates bent to L-shape. Each intermediate section 16 consists of a central wall 18 and perpendicular thereto two end plates 19. The end strip 20 of each end plate 19 is pro vided with two projecting webs 21 and bent outwardly to a right angle and thus extends in a plane parallel to the central wall 18. Adjacent to each end edge the central wall 18 is provided with two pockets 22 for receiving the webs 21 of neighbouring sections. A single pocket is shown on an enlarged scale in FIG. 4. Such a pocket can be made by means of a punching and stamping tool cutting a strip of material free of the wall 18 along the side edges and pressing the central portion of the strip outwards from the wall to a distance slightly greater than twice the plate thickness. The pockets 22 face away from the adjacent end plate 19.

The end sections 17 differ from the intermediate sections 16 only in that they have but one end plate 19 and but one set of pockets 22 disposed at the free edge of the end plate.

The document filing rack according to the invention may be formed in many other ways than illustrated in the drawing and described above. For instance may wire netting be substituted for plates as wall-forming elements.

What I claim is:

l. A document filing rack comprising a plurality of wall-forming elements including end elements assembled as a unit so as to form a plurality of box shaped compartments having inclined side walls and top and bottom walls extending substantially perpendicularly thereto, each of said elements except said end elements consisting of a plate bent generally to Z-shape having a central portion and two end portions extending perpendicularly thereto in opposite directions, each of said end portions being provided at its free edge with one or more turned-out, deformable flaps defining projections thereon which are in engagement with pockets formed in or provided on the central portion of an adjacent element a short distance from one end thereof and on the surface facing away from the adjacent end portion, said turned-out flaps being bent at substantially right angles to said end portions, each of said end elements being L-shaped and including a central wall having flap receiving pockets adjacent a free edge thereof extending perpendicularly to said central wall, the end portions on said end elements having bent flaps engaging the pockets of the adjacent elements, the uppermost corner of each document compartment being disposed substantially vertically above the diametrically opposed lowermost corner of the same compartment.

2. A document filing rack according to claim 1, characterized in that the pockets are formed by punching and stamping strips of the central portion.

3. A document filing rack according to claim 1, characterized in that the side walls of the compartments form an angle of from l0 to 30, preferably about 15,

with respect to the vertical plane.

Claims

1. A document filing rack comprising a plurality of wall-forming elements including end elements assembled as a unit so as to form a plurality of box shaped compartments having inclined side walls and top and bottom walls extending substantially perpendicularly thereto, each of said elements except said end elements consisting of a plate bent generally to Z-shape having a central portion and two end portions extending perpendicularly thereto in opposite directions, each of said end portions being provided at its free edge with one or more turned-out, deformable flaps defining projections thereon which are in engagement with pockets formed in or provided on the central portion of an adjacent element a short distance from one end thereof and on the surface facing away from the adjacent end portion, said turned-out flaps being bent at substantially right angles to said end portions, each of said end elements being L-shaped and including a central wall having flap receiving pockets adjacent a free edge thereof extending perpendicularly to said central wall, the end portions on said end elements having bent flaps engaging the pockets of the adjacent elements, the uppermost corner of each document compartment being disposed substantially vertically above the diametrically opposed lowermost corner of the same compartment.