Apparatus For Shortening or Storing Elongate Flexible Materials

Abstract

A device for shortening or storing a length of an elongate and flexible material such as rope, string, wire, electrical cable or cable-like items includes a two-part housing. A first portion of the housing forms a window or passage for receiving a loop of the flexible material. A second or opposing portion includes a spindle arranged with a member extending therefrom for engaging the loop. The first and second portions engage each other along an inner surface of their respective perimeters to enclose a volume that surrounds the spindle. One of the first portion or the second portion is rotated with respect to the remaining portion to draw a desired length of the flexible material into a volume enclosed by the housing, thereby shortening, protecting and storing the enclosed length of material in a reversible, none-damaging manner.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61 / 539,204, entitled, Enclosed Reel Device for Shortening Cables, which was filed on Sep. 26, 2011, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]This invention relates to storage devices for long flexible materials such as cables, wires, fibers, strings, cords, ropes, hoses, and the like. More particularly, to an apparatus for shortening and storing the same.BACKGROUND[0003]In this description, the term “cable” is used as a generic term and should be taken to mean any long flexible physical structure which can be wound about a spindle, or cylinder and which has a length long enough to allow more than one width of the material to be wound side-by-side on the same spindle or cylinder. To amplify this meaning, toilet paper which (for example) is a long and flexible physical structure, would not be considered to be a “cable” for th...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The patent describes a device that can be used to shorten or store elongate flexible materials like rope, string, wire, and cable. It includes a housing with two parts that can be joined together to create a volume where the flexible material is stored and protected. The device has a spindle with a member that can engage the flexible material and a mechanism to adjust the length of the material inside the housing. The device can be used to shorten or store the material without damaging it and can be conveniently stored when not in use.

Problems solved by technology

But it is this undefined and potentially variable distance between those two points to be joined, which generates its own problems, firstly in terms of length adjustment and secondly in terms of problems concerning the storage of the excess length of cable, which it is undesirable to permanently remove (by cutting for example) as the extra length may be needed in future.

That of course leads to the problem that in order for the cable to be long enough for some uses, it is invariably too long for many other uses.

In turn, this gives rise to the further problem of how to shorten a cable without cutting it, preferably in a manner which looks neat, while protecting it from dust, damaging exposure to ultraviolet radiation or other contamination, so that if in the future it is ever lengthened again, the lengthened part does not look as if it just emerged from the Roman catacombs, and is also not alternatively covered in hard-to-remove bands of dried adhesive left behind by the adhesive tape sometimes used to temporally shorten it.

Electrical devices particularly come with a length of cable that is often too long for convenient use.

Due to ends with molded plugs that are common with such cables, and for other reasons, it is often impractical or undesirable to physically cut the cable and shorten it, not the least reason being that the shortened cable may be too short for some other future use.

However, all of these solutions produce the sort of unsightly, unaesthetic solutions which are not something one is proud to display in their house or office.

Additionally some of these solutions are quite difficult to remove and in some cases changing the effective length of the cable can mean re-doing the whole shortening process from scratch.

The exposed hand-coiled cable, which is then secured in some manner is a common solution but one which become dirty over time and impossible to clean without undoing the coiled cable just to clean it.

One way and another, the whole process is so much trouble and is anyway so unattractive even when done, that often it is not done at all, and the spare cable is simply left as an unsightly bird's nest of cables behind many a computer and TV—a tangle which is also extremely confusing if just one cable has to be replaced or changed.

In some cases, there is no real solution to the problem.

This is not particularly sightly and also has the disadvantage that when needed (which is often necessary in a hurry), it takes time to undo the ties, and even when the coil is then opened, the rope often tangles especially if the rope is long—leading to frustration and sometimes dangerous delay while it is untangled.

In other uses, such as trucking, where ropes are used to secure cargo, the same kinds of storage problems occur when the ropes are not in use, and equally with the loose end of a rope where the body of the rope is securing cargo, or performing some other function.

Similar problems occur wherever ropes, string, or cables are used for any non-permanent use.

Many cable-like materials such as rope will last longer when they are protected from sunlight, dirt and other contaminants, but many shortening methods provide no protection at all.

But while the closed reel is so obviously the ideal mechanism for the purpose, the bird's nest of wiring which exists behind nearly every TV, stereo or computer installation is testimony to the fact that an unsolved cable management problem still exists despite this solution.

The fact that the enclosed reel is clearly and theoretically an ideal cable shortening and storage mechanism and yet is equally obviously not used under many circumstances where it could theoretically be useful, indicates that some kind of problem exists with it, which the prior art has not resolved despite a great deal of trying as the many families of cable management systems attests.

While the cable can be attached easily enough, open reels present three problems for many uses.

First, and minor in the scale of problems, is that the final cable end also needs to be to be attached to the reel in some way so that it does not unwind of its own accord.

The second and also usually a minor problem is that since such reels are open, they do not protect the stored cable from dust, light, and exposure to other contaminants.

However, the final and most significant problem is that they are not aesthetically neat and this is important where domestic or office use is concerned—who wants to see wires lying in odd places around their office or home which are going to reels, which look like they fell out of an electrician's toolbox?

Such a solution is perhaps almost never used because it would be less aesthetic than the problem it was intended to solve.

However, the closed reel does have one considerable disadvantage which effectively prevents such enclosed reels from being used under many circumstances where they could be useful in theory.

This difficulty and the unsolved problem in closed reel designs is the difficulty of attaching the short end of the cable (or a loop of it from the middle of a cable to be shortened) to the hub or spindle lurking in the dark and inaccessible interior of the housing so that the spindle will wind in the cable when the spindle is rotated by any of many obvious mechanisms.

However, having to open the reel, manipulate parts to attach the cable to the spindle, and then close the reel can be time consuming, difficult and inconvenient.

This design is not aesthetically pleasing, and is only partially closed and has not achieved any noticeable commercial success.

None of these attempts at temporary reel-based storage for connected cables achieve noticeable commercial success for home or office use to shorten cables and generally the design principle makes the resulting device not very pleasing aesthetically, and (with the exception of the reel enclosure, which can be opened by the user) only partially protects the cable within.

Such devices seem to achieve only minor acceptance even for desktop or wall use and are aesthetically unsatisfactory at best if dangling from a free standing suspended wire as would occur with TV, computer or stereo installations.

The difficulties and annoyances of what should be a simple process of attaching a cable to an enclosed reel are so considerable in the state of the art in practice that such systems are almost never seen in use, and consequently a tangle of wires behind most stereo, TV or computer installations still reigns supreme.

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