Quad Chair With Safety Spacer

Abstract

A collapsible chair (100) with quad configuration includes a spacer element (160) that increases the distance between the cross bars (152, 154) of a cross brace (150). While contemplated spacer elements reduce collapsibility of the chair, they will in most cases prevent injury to the fingers of a person that collapses the chair by holding on, or applying force to one or more cross bars (152, 154).

Description

FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0001]Collapsible Furniture, and particularly collapsible chairs having a quad structure.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]Folding chairs are relatively popular, in part because they can be stored at considerably reduced space requirements when compared to non-folding chairs. Exemplary folding chairs with solid arm rests and seat support rods are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,613,185 to Marchesini et al. (Sep. 23, 1986), U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,525 to Tseng (May 4, 1999), U.S. Pat. No. 5,947,553 to Tseng (Sep. 7, 1999), and U.S. Pat. No. 6,062,639 to Hill (May 16, 2000), all of which are incorporated by reference herein.[0003]Nevertheless, previously known folding chairs still take up a relatively large space when folded, since the dimension of the folding chair is generally reduced only along one space coordinate (e.g., reduced length). To further reduce the space requirement, collapsible chairs have been developed in which further size reduction is achieved by fold...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0006]The present invention is directed to configurations and methods for a collapsible chair having a quad configuration in which a spacer increases the distance between the cross bars of a cross brace to thereby reduce or prevent injury to a user's hand or fingers as the used collapses the chair.

[0007]In one aspect of the inventive subject matter, a collapsible chair has a first cross brace with a first cross bar and a second cross bar, and a second cross brace with a third cross bar and a fourth cross bar. In such chairs, the first and second cross braces are coupled to each other via a third cross brace with a fifth cross bar and a sixth cross bar and a fourth cross brace with a seventh cross bar and an eighth cross bar, such that one end of the first cross bar is pivotably coupled to one end of the eight cross bar and one end of the second cross bar is pivotably coupled to one end of the third cross bar to thereby form a quad structure. Each of the first cross bar and the second cross bar, the third cross bar and the fourth cross bar, the fifth cross bar and the sixth cross bar, and the seventh cross bar and the eighth cross bar are rotatably coupled to each other via a first, second, third, and fourth axis, respectively, and at least one of the first, second, third, and fourth axes is coupled to a spacer element that maintains a minimum distance of at least 1 cm between the cross bars that are rotatably coupled to each other, wherein the spacer element reduces collapsibility of the collapsible chair as compared to the chair without the spacer element.

Problems solved by technology

Nevertheless, previously known folding chairs still take up a relatively large space when folded, since the dimension of the folding chair is generally reduced only along one space coordinate (e.g., reduced length).

While such chairs provide substantial increase in collapsibility by virtue of their quad configuration, new problems arise.

Therefore, while there are numerous configurations for collapsible chairs are known in the art, all or almost all of them suffer from one or more disadvantages.

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