Insulated Game Cooler With Wall Apertures for Whole-Animal Storage
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current coolers, both hard-shelled and soft, are inadequate for storing whole game animals like deer without requiring dismemberment, leading to inconvenience, spoilage, and additional costs for hunters, as they often leak and are not designed for multi-purpose use.
Innovation Solution
A thermally protective cooler with hardened material walls and strategically placed apertures allows whole game animals to be stored without dismemberment, providing ample space for cooling media, keeping the vehicle clean, and serving multiple functions like a food and beverage cooler.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If soft coolers are used for storing whole game animals, then the cooler is flexible and easy to handle, but it creates creases and folds where blood and hair accumulate, making it difficult to clean and causing leakage
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses a hard-shelled cooler with a smooth interior surface that prevents blood and hair accumulation, eliminating the creases and folds inherent in soft coolers. The hard shell maintains structural integrity while providing a non-porous surface that is easy to clean and prevents leakage.
Solution Approach 2:
The cooler interior is designed with a uniform smooth surface without creases, folds, or irregularities. This homogeneous surface prevents blood and hair from accumulating in hidden areas, making cleaning straightforward and preventing contamination.
2Ease of manufacture
If hard-shelled coolers are used for storing whole game animals, then the cooler is durable and easy to clean, but it does not accommodate the whole animal without requiring dismemberment
Solution Approach 1:
The cooler incorporates vertical apertures in its walls that allow the animal to be inserted and stored in a vertical orientation. This dimensional approach enables the whole animal to fit within the cooler's volume without requiring dismemberment, while maintaining the hard-shelled structure's cleaning advantages.
Solution Approach 2:
The cooler is designed with separate apertures for different parts of the animal (head, legs, tail), allowing each body part to be inserted through its own opening. This segmentation enables the storage of the whole animal without requiring it to be cut into smaller pieces.
3Reliability
If hunters use separate coolers for game animals and food/beverages, then each cooler is optimized for its specific purpose, but the hunter must purchase multiple coolers, increasing cost and complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The cooler is designed to serve multiple functions: it can store whole game animals through its apertures, store processed meat, and function as a conventional food and beverage cooler. This multi-functionality eliminates the need for separate coolers, reducing cost and complexity while maintaining reliable performance for each purpose.
4Ease of operation
If hunters transport game animals in inadequate ambient temperature, then transportation is convenient, but the meat spoils without adequate temporary cold storage
Solution Approach 1:
The cooler combines transportation functionality with cold storage functionality in a single device. The hard-shelled insulated cooler maintains adequate ambient temperature during transportation while providing temporary cold storage, ensuring meat preservation without compromising transportation convenience.
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
The cooler effectively maintains game animals at a suitable temperature, reduces spoilage, and serves multiple purposes, making it convenient, affordable, and easy to clean, while minimizing the need for additional trips and storage fees.
Implementation Method 1
thermally protective storage cooler... hardened material walls... maintains game animals at a suitable temperature
Data Source
AI summary
A thermally protective storage cooler with a plurality of hardened material walls. The cooler also has at least one aperture formed in a first wall of the hardened material walls and at least two apertures formed in a second wall of the hardened material walls. In the cooler, the second wall is adjacent the first wall so that each of the at least one aperture and the at least two apertures is for receiving a respective portion of a body of game when a portion of the body of the game is stored in an interior of the cooler.