WO2005080730A1

WO2005080730A1 - Actuating system for casings

Info

Publication number: WO2005080730A1
Application number: PCT/EP2004/013717
Authority: WO
Inventors: Giuliano Galliazzo
Original assignee: Nekos Srl
Priority date: 2004-02-19
Filing date: 2004-12-02
Publication date: 2005-09-01
Also published as: EP1723303B1; DK1723303T3; ATE457406T1; EP1723303A1; DE602004025514D1; ES2340589T3; ITTV20040008U1

Abstract

Actuating system (1) for casings, comprising a fixing bracket (10); a box (20) containing motor means for moving the casing, means (30, 50) for hinging together said bracket (10) and said box (20), said hinging means consisting solely of corresponding shaped parts (30, 50) of said bracket (10) and said box (20).

Description

ACTUATING SYSTEM FOR CASINGS.

The present invention relates to an actuating system for casings which allows particularly easy installation.

Various designs exist for most of the actuating systems for casing, from among which, for the sake of simplicity, those used in a domestic environment will be considered here. A very common design comprises a fixing bracket which is to be mounted on the casing and which supports a box by means of two side arms. Said box encloses an electric motor which, by means of gears, engages with and drives a chain.

This chain has one end which always remains inside the box, while the other end is secured to the movable part of the casing, which is reached via an opening in said box. Owing to the particular configuration of the box and the provision of special guides, the chain is able to be completely wound inside said box, occupying a m-riimum amount of space. When the motor is operated, the chain is unwound and the end connected to the casing moves away from the box, causing opening of the said casing. During closing, the motor retracts and rewinds the chain inside the box. Usually the bracket and the box are made of plastic. Normally installation of this type of actuating system is performed after installation of the. In the case of conventional systems, the person carrying out installation must first fix the bracket to the casing, usually by means of screws. Following which, according to the prior art, essentially two variations exist: either the box is pivotably mounted on the bracket and fixed there by means of screws or a dovetail joint is formed between bracket and box, which joint is then made fast by means of locking screws. The disadvantage of these solutions is obvious when one considers that the person carrying out installation nearly always performs the assembly operations on a ladder, having to support and fix the components at the same time. As a result, assembly is awkward to perform, installation may be imprecise and the person carrying out installation risks losing his/her balance. The object of the present invention is to provide an actuating system which does not have the drawbacks described, but allows simple and rapid installation of bracket and box without the use of screws or the like.

This object is achieved by the actuating system designed in accordance with the following claims, from which it can be deduced that the characteristic feature of the invention is to provide a system for hinging together the bracket and box by means of suitable shaping of the said bracket and box. The corresponding parts during formation of the hinge may be added to the bracket and the box or conveniently incorporated in the said bracket and box, during moulding of their plastic bodies. In one particular embodiment, the ends of the arms of the bracket have formed thereon a tooth, to which a receiving surface formed in the body of the box corresponds. Said receiving surface communicates with a seat for said tooth, which is again formed in the body of the box. Once said tooth has been engaged inside said seat, bracket and box are directly joined together firmly, without the addition of fixing means. For greater reliability it is possible to shape said seat and/or said tooth so as to prevent accidental disengagement thereof. An equivalent solution is to form said tooth in the body of the box and the channel and the seat in the bracket. The advantages of the present invention will become more obvious from the following description in which an embodiment provided solely by way of a non- exclusive example is considered and reference is made to the accompanying drawing in which:

Fig. 1 shows an overall view of the actuating system for casings; Fig. 2 shows a view of a bracket and a part of a box according to one embodiment; Fig. 3 shows another view of the same parts of the actuating system according to Fig. 2.

Fig. 1 shows an actuating system 1 consisting of a bracket 10 and an elongated box 20. Said bracket 10, which is able to be fixed to the casing (not shown) or, alternatively, to the wall, comprises two support arms 12, one of which is partly visible in Fig. 1. Said arms are situated at the ends of the box 20 with the aim of spacing the box 20 from the bracket 10. The free ends of the arms 12 each comprises a tooth 30 in the form of a parallelepiped (see Fig. 2). Said tooth 30 may be an element formed directly during moulding or may be mounted subsequently on the arm 12. Said tooth 30 has a given height T and a given length L (see Fig. 2). For the sake of simplicity, the description which follows refers to one side only of the actuating system 1 since the other side is identical in all respects.

A side 20a of the box 20 (see Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) comprises a receiving surface 50 formed in the body of the said box 20. Said receiving surface 50 has a width H and extends vertically inside the box 20 from the bottom side 22 thereof (the box 20 in Fig. 2 is shown rotated through 90° with respect to the position which it would assume when mounted). The receiving surface 50 terminates in a circular seat 40 which is also formed in the body of the said box. The length L and the height T are related to the diameter of said seat in such a way as to allow said tooth 30 to touch with its edges the walls of the circular seat, once it has been inserted as will be described more clearly below. The height H of the receiving surface 50 is substantially equal to the height T of the tooth 50, while the depth of the receiving surface 50 and the seat 40 correspond to the projection of the tooth 30.

In order to mount the actuating system 1 , the following procedure is adopted. After fixing the bracket 10 to the casing, the box 20 is moved towards the arms 12 of said bracket 10. Said box 20 is rotated through 90° with respect to the casing, resulting in the position shown in Fig. 2, so as to align the receiving surface 50 with the tooth 30. Said tooth 30 is then inserted into the receiving surface 50 so as to engage it inside the seat 40 and the box 20 is rotated through 90° in the opposite direction to the previous direction. The box 20 is thus hinged with the bracket 10 by means of the tooth 30 and the seat 40, without the possibility of separation since the tooth 30 is completely gripped by the walls of the seat 40. In order to separate the box 20 from the bracket 10, the opposite sequence of operations to that described above is performed. It is clear that the dimensions of the seat 40 and those indicated by H, T and L may vary depending on the design. It is also possible to imagine variations with regard to the form of the bracket 10 (a bracket with 1 or 2 arms, different position of the tooth

30, etc.), the form of the box 10 (for example, a different position or orientation of the receiving surface 40 and the seat 50), which variations, however, are all included within the scope of protection of the present invention. Another example of a variation is to design a bracket as shown in Figs. 2 and 3, but with a cylindrical lug between the free ends of the two arms 12. At least one omega- shaped tongue (Ω) is integral with the box 20, in the sense that one "foot" of the omega is situated on one side of the box, while the other "foot" of the omega is free. In this case hinging together of the bracket 10 and box 20 is performed by inserting with pressure said lug inside said tongue (thus occupying the space delimited by the body of the omega). In this variation also, hinging between the bracket 10 and the box

20 is achieved by making use of the shape of these two elements, without additional fixing means.

It is understood that the following claims comprise the variations described and all those which are equivalent to the present invention.

Claims

1. Actuating system (1) for a casing, comprising at least:

- a fixing bracket (10);

- a box (20) containing motor means; - means (30, 30) for hinging together said bracket (10) and said box (20); characterized in that said hinging means consist solely of corresponding shaped parts (30, 50) of said bracket (10) and said box (20).

2. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 1, characterized in that said bracket (20) comprises two side arms (12) for supporting said box (20).

3. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 2, characterized in that a tooth (30) is provided on said arms (12) and in that said box (20) is provided with a receiving surface (50) for said tooth (30), terminating in a seat (40) able to contain said tooth (30) without play.

4. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 2, characterized in that the box (20) is provided with a tooth and in that said two side arms (12) are provided with a receiving surface for said tooth, terminating in a seat able to contain said tooth without play.

5. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 3 or 4, characterized in that said seat (40) is circular.

6. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 5, characterized in that said receiving surface (50) and said seat (40) are arranged on the sides of said box (20), said receiving surface (50) extending from the base (22) of said box (20) and having its axis perpendicular to the axis of said hinging means (30, 50).

7. Actuating system (1) according to Claim 2, characterized in that said bracket (10) comprises, between the ends of the support arms (12), a cylindrical lug able to be surrounded by an omega-shaped tongue, one foot of which is integral with said casing

(20).