Mold-in Touch Fastener Strip with Segmented Barrier Walls
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional hook-and-loop fasteners face challenges when incorporated into foam materials, as the foam material often floods and inhibits the functionality of the fastener elements during the molding process, leading to reduced effectiveness in applications like attaching upholstery to car seat cushions.
Innovation Solution
A male touch fastener strip design featuring an elongated base with longitudinal and lateral barrier walls, segmented walls, and foam disruptors, which create foam relief spaces and flow gaps to control the foam flow, preventing foam intrusion and ensuring the fastener elements remain functional and securely attached to the foam material.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If the fastener product is positioned within a cushion mold during foam forming, then the fastener elements can be incorporated into the foam cushion, but the foam material floods the fastener elements and inhibits their usefulness
Solution Approach 1:
The side walls are divided into multiple discrete wall segments spaced apart from each other, creating gaps between segments. This segmentation allows controlled foam flow through the gaps while maintaining barrier function, resolving the contradiction between foam incorporation and fastener functionality.
Solution Approach 2:
Different regions of the fastener product have different properties: the top surface provides barrier protection for fastener elements, while the bottom surface with gaps allows foam anchoring. This local differentiation enables both foam incorporation and fastener functionality to coexist.
2Reliability
If barrier walls are added to prevent foam intrusion, then fastener element functionality is protected, but foam flow control and anchoring become difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The barrier walls are segmented into discrete sections rather than forming continuous barriers. This segmentation creates controlled gaps that allow foam to flow through and anchor to the fastener product while still protecting the fastener elements from complete flooding.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the fastener strip is made flexible to accommodate molding, then it can conform to the mold, but the structural integrity and fastener element stability may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The fastener product incorporates flexible hinges that allow dynamic bending and conforming to mold shapes during manufacturing, while the overall structural integrity is maintained through the unitary construction and strategic placement of barrier walls.
Data Source
AI summary
A male touch fastener strip includes an elongated base having a thickness and defining a longitudinal direction and a lateral direction perpendicular to the longitudinal direction across the base between longitudinal edges of the base, and a field of male fastener elements each having a stem extending from a broad face of the base and a head at an upper end of the stem and overhanging the base for engaging fibers. The fastener element stems and broad face of the base together form a unitary mass of resin. The male touch fastener strip also includes longitudinal barrier walls rising from the broad face of the base on either side of the field of male fastener elements, and a pair of segmented walls rising from the broad face of the base, each segmented wall of the pair disposed laterally outboard of a respective nearest one of the longitudinal barrier walls and including a series of wall segments defining longitudinal gaps therebetween. Each segmented wall and its nearest longitudinal barrier wall define therebetween a foam relief space for receiving a foam material. Each segmented wall defines a flow gap for allowing the foam material to enter the foam relief space.