WO1999012168A1

WO1999012168A1 - A carrier rack for cd cassettes and similar items

Info

Publication number: WO1999012168A1
Application number: PCT/DK1998/000370
Authority: WO
Inventors: Kurt Schlott Hansen
Original assignee: Kurt Schlott Hansen
Priority date: 1997-09-04
Filing date: 1998-08-28
Publication date: 1999-03-11
Also published as: AU8798698A; DK9700337U4

Abstract

A CD cassette rack essentially consisting of three parallel rods arranged so as to hold the cassettes in slightly rearwardly slanting positions, with their lower edges supported on a foremost lower rod (12) and their rear edges supported rearwardly against a lower rear rod (16), while an upper rod (14 or 26) serves to limit the rearward tilting of the cassette by cooperation with either the foremost portion of the upper edge of the cassette or the upper portion of the rear edge thereof, so as to ensure a neatly aligned row of cassettes in the rack. Each of the cassettes will be easily sizeable in being tilted forwardly, and the rack is simple in construction and easy to clean, insofar as essentially it is made up of only three parallel rods.

Description

A carrier rack for CD cassettes and similar items .

The present invention relates to a carrier rack for CD cassettes, CD-ROM cassettes and similar flat, rectangular items .

In this field, a long row of different rack designs already exists, each with some advantages and some drawbacks, and it is deemed unnecessary at this place to analyse them in more detail. The invention seeks to provide a novel rack design or principle, which is very simple in construction and very convenient in use, both with respect to the handling of the cassettes and the cleaning of the rack.

The invention departs from the consideration that in con- nection with rigid, rectangular items having standardised surface dimensions and a reasonably even mass distribution, but irrespective of their thickness, it will be possible to arrange for a simple, self-centring support simply consisting of two horizontal parallel rods, on which the items are placed in a upright position, but turned at some angle with the vertical/horizontal directions, i.e. with a corner dipping down between the two rods. Thus, such two rods, even when not located in a common horizontal plane, could constitute a self-centring carrier rack when used as described, which would amount to a very simple rack structure that would be very little dust collecting and very easy to clean.

However, such a rack would suffer from a serious drawback, viz. that it would not automatically line up the CD cassettes in a purely corner-linear manner, this being a "must" for a neat look of the CD collection in the rack.

On this background, the invention is completed by prescribing the presence of a third rod or support edge that will serve to limit the rearward tilting of the cassette when the same is inserted over the foremost of the two underlying rods in order to bring the point of gravity of the cassette to a position behind this foremost rod or carrier edge. Thereby the cassette will tilt rearwardly and slide rearwardly until the lower part of its rear upright edge will abut the second support rod or edge and now also until the cassette has tilted sufficiently to bring an upper edge portion into contact with the said third support rod or edge. This contact may be established by way of the third rod being arranged so as to engage either the upper end of the rear edge of the cassette or the foremost end of the upper edge thereof. With such an arrangement it will be ensured that all of the cassettes will automatically seek into fully identical angular positions such that they will be displayed fully lined up.

It will be appreciated that the addition of such a "third rod or support edge" will not substantially add to the dust collecting ability of the rack, nor to the required effort of keeping the rack clean. The title edge areas of the supported CD cassettes will be easy to read, because the front edges of the stored cassettes will be slanting upwardly and rearwardly.

The said third rod or support edge may advantageously be placed right above the foremost lower support rod, for coop- eration with the top edge of the cassettes. This will imply that the vertical distance between these two rods or edges should be somewhat larger that the high dimension of the cassettes, which in turn means that the cassettes are very easy to insert into the rack, whereafter they will automatically tilt rearwardly until their top edges are swung upwardly to abut the upper foremost rod or edge.

Thus, the cassettes are easy to insert into the rack, as they will be self-centring therein whenever their point of gravity has been introduced beyond the foremost carrier rod or edge. However, they will moreover be very easy to be brought into an easily sizeable delivery position, since for this purpose it is sufficient to press down, with a finger, the upper front edge portion of any selected cassette, whereby the selected cassette will be swung forwardly so as to ex- pose its upper front corner region for easy gripping irrespective of closely juxtaposed, still slanting neighbouring cassettes. If the said third rod or edge is located in a high foremost position it is even achievable that such a forward tilting of a cassette will cause the rear portion of the upper edge of the cassette to abut the third rod or edge such that the cassette is stabilised in a forwardly and downwardly tilted position, in which it is easily sizeable by a gripping of the upper front corner portion thereof.

In the following the invention is described in more detail with reference to the drawing, in which:

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a CD rack according to the invention, Fig. 2 is a schematic side view of the support means of the racks, shown with different positions of a CD cassette to be inserted and stored therein and to be removed therefrom, Fig. 3 is a similar side view of a modified arrangement of the support means, Figs. 4-6 are perspective views of modified embodiments thereof, and

Figs. 7-8 are perspective views of a rack that is wall mountable with both vertical and horizontal orientation. The rack shown in Fig. 1 comprises four upright rods, viz. two front rods 2 and two rear rods 4, interconnected by means of respective lateral cross rods 6. The vertical rods are terminated in a bottom or foot structure 8 and a top structure 10 of any desired shape.

The front rods 2 carry between them a low, foremost transverse steel rod 12 and a higher transverse rod 14, while the rear rods 4 carry between them a low transverse steel rod 16, here shown in level with the front rod 12. Spaced above this set of three transverse rods 12, 14, 16 there is arranged a similar set of transverse rods 12', 14'. 16'. The three rods 12, 14, 16 are represented in Fig. 2. The distance between the front rods 12 and 14 slightly larger that the height dimension of a CD cassette 18, so such a cassette, shown as CD1, can freely be inserted through the space between these rods when held with a substantially horizontal- /vertical orientation. As soon as the point of gravity P is moved past the vertical through the support rod 12, the cassette 18 may be released and thus allowed to tilt rearwardly, whereby it will automatically slide rearwardly on the hard, low friction surface of the rod 12 until its rear edge abuts the rear rod 16. The lower rear corner 20 may seek further down between the rods 12 and 16, with the rear edge of the cassette sliding freely on the rod 16 as shown for a cassette CD2, but very soon the further tilting of the cassette will be stopped by its top edge abutting the upper rod 14, confer cassette CD3. The point of gravity (P_CD3) will now be located such that the cassette will seek to pivot further rearwardly and downwardly about the rod 12. This, however, is effec- tively prevented by the abutment against the upper rod 14, where-by it is ensured that the upper front corners 22 of all of the cassettes placed in the rack will be located neatly along a straight line, despite possible small variations in the friction effects of their edge portions and in the loca- tion of their points of gravity. This also incurs that the visible title edge of the cassettes will be only moderately slanting, yet with the effect of the titles being more readily readable.

For the taking out of a selected cassette from the rack it will be possible to grasp any cassette by fingerpoint contact with the opposed foremost upper and lower exposed corner portions thereof. Another possibility is to preselect a given cassette by pressing down the upper front corner 22 thereof so as to pivot the cassette into a swung-up position, from which it is rearwardly displaceable into a position, CD 4, in which it is supported even by the rear of its lower edge resting downwardly against the rod 16, with the upper front corner, 22, CD4, projecting forwardly from the row of all of the other cassettes in the rack. This protruding corner por- tion, therefore, will be easy to grip by fingerpoints against the opposite lateral sides of the selected cassette.

Another possibility is to depress the front corner 22 to such an extent that the cassette, as shown by position CD5, is tilted forwardly about the lower front rod 12 until a rear part of its upper edge is brought to abut the upper rod 14. In this forwardly tilted position the cassette is liable to slide forwardly, but it may be retained in this position if the rod 14 is coated by a friction material 24. In that case, of course, the upper front corner portion will be particularly easily grippable, as it will protrude noticeably in front of the edges of the other CD cassettes in the row.

The support members 12, 14, 16 should not necessarily by "rods", as each of them may merely by edges on profiled elements as indicated in dotted lines at 12", 14" and 16", respectively.

In order to stabilise the cassettes 18 in their inserted positions, it is an alternative possibility to replace the upper rod 14 by an upper rear rod 26, as shown in Fig. 3. It will be readily understood that an inserted cassette 18 will hereby be prevented against further rearward tilting just as effectively as with the use of the upper rod 14. The cassette 18 cannot, then, be swung out to the gripping position CD5 of Fig. 2, but still to the gripping position CD4 thereof, with the upper front corner 22 ready to be gripped. The cassette 18 may be inserted and drawn out with any angular orientation, illustrated by position CD6.

With the embodiment of Fig. 3 it is a special feature that the rear upper rod 26 can be replaced by a rear wall surface 26' represented either by a wall portion of the CD rack itself or by a building wall portion. In the latter case the special carrier structure of the invention will only have to comprise the lower rods or edges 12 and 16, when the car- rier structure as secured to a wall is otherwise so dimensioned that the cassettes, when placed on the lower rods 12 and 16, will lean back against the wall 26' with their rear upper corners so as to be stabilised in their tilted and aligned positions relative to all of the other cassettes in the row. If it forms part of the rack structure, the wall portion may be slanting as shown at 26" .

Fig. 4 shown a modified table supported embodiment of the rack according to the invention, still including the support rods 12, 14 and 16 of Figs. 1 and 2. Fig. 5 shows a wall mounted rack having just the same support rods .

Fig. 6 shows an embodiment according to the aspect of Fig. 3 referring to the support of the rear wall surface 26' for the upper rear corners of the cassettes. In this case the rack will only need to comprise the two lower rods and edges 12 and 16 in a mounting system ensuring an appropriate distance of the carrier rods from the wall 26' . In both Fig. 2 and Fig. 3, the upper rods 14 and 26 may advantageously be frictional members; due to their high positions they will then still better act stabilising on the CD cassettes in the lateral direction.

Figs. 7 and 8 show an embodiment much similar to Fig. 1, but here provided with fittings 30 for wall mounting. In this instance it is characteristic that the two front openings for receiving the CD cassettes are quadratic to the effect the elongated rack can be placed on the wall both in a vertical and a horizontal position, viz. by virtue of the fact that in both positions there will be respective rear support rods 16 located horizontally behind the foremost carrier rod 12 in the same distance therefrom. In Fig. 7 the two receiver compartments are designated A and B, and the relevant rod designations are the same as used for the lower compartment of Fig. 1, i.e. 12,14 and 16, now with respective indexes a and b. Similarly, the same compartments are designated C and D in Fig. 8, with indexes c and d for the relevant rod portions. The two front rods 14 and 12' of Fig. 1 are here designated 14b and 12a, respectively, and the short connector rod por- tions between them are designated 13. Thus, the right hand vertical front rod in Fig. 7 includes three length sections, 12d, 13 and 12c, and the sections 12d and 12c should each have the same length as the cross rods 14a and 14b.

For use with standard CD cassettes having a height of 125 mm and a width of 140 mm, the free distance between the front rods 12 and 14 should preferably be 130-140 mm, while the center distance between the lower rods 12 and 16, when these are 7 mm thick and are located in the same horizontal plane, should be some 75-80 mm. In Fig. 6, the front side of the rod 16 should be spaced some 35-40 mm from the wall.

Claims

C L A I M S :

1. A carrier rack for CD cassettes and similar flat, rectangular and standard sized items, comprising two parallel, interspaced ridges for supporting the lower area of a number of such cassettes, characterised in that the two ridges are spaced slightly more that corresponding to half the horizontal depth of the cassettes, so as to permit a partly inserted cassette to tilt rearwardly and downwardly about the foremost ridge, with the rear lower corner of the cassette dipping down between the two ridges and with the rear edge of the cassette abutting the rearmost ridge, the rack further comprising a third ridge arranged in a high position so as to effect stoppage of the gravity conditioned rearward tilting of the cassette in being engaged either by the foremost portion of the upper edge of the cassette or the uppermost portion of the rear edge of the cassette to thereby define for the tilted cassette a stop position in which the front edge of the cassette is slanting rearwardly at an angle substan- tially less that 45 degrees with the vertical direction.

2. A carrier rack according to claim 1, in which the third, upper ridge is provided as a frictional element.

3. A rack according to claim 1, comprising at least two receiver compartments for the cassettes and adapted for wall mounting, said compartments having quadratic front openings and rear rod or ridge means enabling operative use of the rack in both vertical and horizontal position thereof.

4. A rack according to claim 1, in which the two lower ridges are separate rib or rod portions, which are held in a wall mountable carrier structure in such a manner that the wall itself will constitute the third, upper "ridge" means for rearwardly supporting the upper rear corner of the cassette.