Bracket With Snap Flanges For Guiding Rail Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing mounting systems for guiding rails, such as those used in roller blinds or screens, face difficulties in aligning and positioning multiple brackets correctly, leading to potential misalignment and warping issues when trying to attach a single guiding rail to a wall surface, especially when using three or more brackets.
Innovation Solution
A bracket design featuring a body part with snap flanges and a clip part with resilient tongues and arms allows for temporary clamping and alignment of guiding rail legs, facilitating accurate positioning and spacing along the rail before final mounting, using a method that involves selecting the appropriate number of brackets, marking drill holes, and engaging the rail legs with snap flanges for secure attachment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of substance
If multiple smaller brackets are used to mount the guiding rail, then material usage is reduced, but alignment and positioning difficulty increases
Solution Approach 1:
The resilient arms and tongues are pre-configured on the brackets to automatically engage with the guiding rail during installation. This preliminary configuration allows the brackets to self-align with the rail without requiring precise manual positioning, thereby reducing alignment difficulty while maintaining material efficiency through the use of multiple smaller brackets
2Reliability
If three or more brackets are used to mount a single guiding rail, then attachment adequacy is improved, but alignment difficulty and risk of warping increases
Solution Approach 1:
The resilient arms and tongues change their physical state from rigid to flexible during engagement, allowing them to deform and accommodate minor misalignments between brackets and the guiding rail. This parameter change enables three or more brackets to be reliably attached while tolerating positioning variations that would otherwise cause alignment failures or rail warping
3Manufacturing precision
If intermediate brackets are misaligned, then installation failure or rail warping occurs, but using more precise brackets would increase complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The resilient arms and tongues are pre-configured with specific geometric parameters and material properties that enable them to automatically compensate for misalignment during the engagement process. This preliminary design allows the system to achieve proper alignment through the inherent flexibility of the resilient components rather than requiring extremely precise manufacturing tolerances on the bracket bodies themselves
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This solution simplifies the assembly process by ensuring accurate alignment and spacing of multiple brackets, preventing warping and ensuring a secure, level mounting of guiding rails, while reducing material usage and operational complexity.
Implementation Method 1
at least one resilient tongue and at least one resilient arm extending therefrom
Data Source
AI summary
Bracket for mounting a guiding rail to a support surface. The mounting bracket includes a body part having a main body defining a mounting hole and opposite parallel first and second snap flanges. The bracket further has a clip part for engaging its body part and has at least one resilient tongue and at least one resilient arm extending from the clip part in alignment with the first and second snap flanges. The invention also relates to the combination of the mounting bracket and a guiding rail, as well as to a method for mounting a plurality of the brackets and the guiding rail to a mounting surface.