Leveling blade, vibrating screed including the blade, and kit for assembling the same

Abstract

A leveling blade for mounting onto a support bracket of a vibrating screed, and a vibrating screed including the same. The leveling blade has a substantially vertical portion for mounting onto the support bracket, as well as a substantially slanted portion and a substantially horizontal portion, which results in the leveling blade having a particular profile. The vibrating screed includes also a vibration-generating assembly, being operatively mounted onto the support bracket of the vibrating screed for imparting vibrations to the leveling blade via the support bracket so as to enable to carry out a surfacing of a substantially malleable material with the vibrating screed by passing said leveling blade provided with vibrations about said substantially malleable material. A kit is also provided for assembling such a vibrating screed.

Description

[0001] The present application claims priority of U.S. provisional patent application No. 60 / 694,262 filed Jun. 28th, 2005, the content of which is incorporated herein by reference.FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to a leveling blade and to a vibrating screed provided with such a blade. More particularly, the present invention relates to a vibrating screed such as the ones used for surfacing concrete and other like materials, and also relates to a kit for assembling the same, as well as to a method of use or operation associated thereto. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] Vibrating screeds are very well known in the art. Indeed, they are generally used for leveling off a horizontal surface such as a floor, typically made of a malleable material, such as concrete and the like, prior to the hardening thereof. FIG. 1 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,296,467 B1 shows an example of a conventional vibrating screed. As can be easily understood from this figure, a blade is pass...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015] Preferably also, transitions between adjacent portions of the leveling blade and the second end of the substantially horizontal portion thereof are substantially rounded off, for allowing namely, but not limitedly, a smoother surfacing of a malleable material (concrete, etc.) with the leveling blade, so as to overcome undesirable accumulations and / or streaks known to occur with conventional leveling blades.

Problems solved by technology

It is also known in the art that a substantial drawback associated with these types of conventional vibrating screeds is that the profile of the blades used is not optimal (very often, they have a “segmented” profile), which results in an undesirable rearwardly accumulation of material behind the blade as it is passed over the material to be leveled.

Moreover, very often, the vibratory movement which is transmitted to the blade is also transmitted to the handles of the apparatus, and thus onto the hands of the user, which is undesirable for obvious reasons.

Moreover, it can be seen that the handle bars of such a conventional vibrating screed take up a lot of space, which is disadvantageous for storing purposes, and / or cannot be easily adjusted to allow a more ergonomic use of the vibrating screed for each individual user that may present different physical features or capabilities.

Moreover, another substantial drawback associated with vibrating screeds of the prior art is that the general design is such that the components thereof may not be easily interchanged in the event of maintenance and / or repair.

Images