Flexible formed sheets for treating surfaces

Abstract

A surface treatment tool (213) formed from a thin sheet of flexible material, typically a polymer, shaped to store and dispense fluid, scrub, abrade, scrape off and retain debris including particulates from treated surfaces. The tool is useful for cleaning in domestic, industrial, cosmetics, personal or medical care fields. The tool comprises an array (214) of closely spaced hollow mushroom shaped protrusions (212) that store (after a bottom sheet is added that is not shown) then release fluids during rubbing via perforated faces (214), the upstanding mushroom shapes (211) carrying soft rubbing faces (214) with harder scraper edges (217) constitute the operable face with gaps (215) between faces leading into a sunken labyrinth (216) into which loosened debris are scraped up and retained.

Description

FIELD OF INVENTION [0001] The present invention relates to a layered product for treating surfaces in the form of a flexible embossed sheet of malleable material. BACKGROUND TO INVENTION [0002] Wipes made with natural or man made fibre in the form of paper tissue, woven and non-woven cloth and combinations thereof are known and used extensively as surface treatment tools for cleaning and drying but they suffer from several limitations that this invention addresses. [0003] An unfortunate property of many fibre-based products is that when wetted they collapse into a dense wet mass and are then difficult to use. In essence, such fibre-based products have a low wet compressive modulus, low bending modulus and low wet resiliency. Generally fibre tools have good fluid absorbency, adequate tensile strength and are soft and flexible. Fibre wipes are useful for removing dirt, for example large clumps of dirt can be individually removed by using the wipe rather like a glove and wrapping it ar...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0008] The formed sheet is shaped by plastic deformation and made with metal or polymer films or combinations of these and may incorporate other layers of sheet materials like a flat unformed or formed backing sheet. The formed sheet to be suitable for joining with layers of other materials such as non-woven fibre or foam to extend functionality of tool, either joined side by side or back to back. Since it is possible to isolate the faces either with a dividing or backing sheet or not piercing the formed sheet during shaping, there is provided an option of a moisture barrier between sides, which means two different fluids can be dispensed from the two faces of a single sheet, thus the sheet can be used as a single or double sided tool on which each side is embossed and may be used independent of the other, wet or dry.

Problems solved by technology

An unfortunate property of many fibre-based products is that when wetted they collapse into a dense wet mass and are then difficult to use.

There is however what might be termed an intermediate size of dirt, larger than air-mobile dust particles but too small to be picked up individually as clumps, which is difficult to deal with using fibre wipes because the particles cannot penetrate between fibres.

These limitations are encountered in domestic, institutional and industrial cleaning as well as in personal care cosmetics and medical uses when removing dirt either wet or dry.

Efforts to reduce the density of fibre near the surface to facilitate entrapment of dirt at the surface have had only limited success because the dirt is not positively removed from the vicinity of the surface, risking recontamination.

Another approach is to make the non-woven wipe with two layers, the operable layer with a plurality of holes into which particulate is expected to collect during rubbing and be entrapped by exposed areas if a tacky layer used also to join the sheets together, the design lacks positive displacement of particulate from the surface an is less than fully satisfactory.

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