Overlapping Spring Pad Top Plates for Smooth Sheet Ironing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional spring pads for sheet ironing machines cause unsightly wrinkles and marks on the felt cover due to gaps between top plates, leading to poor ironing finishing and increased manufacturing costs with thicker, more expensive felt covers that also reduce ventilation and drying efficiency.
Innovation Solution
A spring pad design where adjacent top plates overlap each other when rolled on the drum, eliminating gaps and using a thin felt cover, with claws to securely hold the felt cover and enhance ventilation through strategically positioned ventilation holes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If a conventional spring pad with spaced top plates is used, then the structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but spaces between top plates cause wrinkles and marks on the felt cover
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges adjacent top plates by making them overlap when the backing strip is rolled on the roller periphery. This eliminates the spaces between top plates that cause wrinkles, while maintaining the modular spring pad structure for ease of manufacture.
2Manufacturing precision
If a thicker felt cover is used to avoid marks from top plate spacing, then surface smoothness is improved, but manufacturing cost increases and ventilation effect decreases
Solution Approach 1:
By merging adjacent top plates through overlap, the patent eliminates the need for a thicker felt cover to bridge the spaces between plates. This allows use of a thinner, less expensive felt cover while maintaining surface smoothness and improving ventilation.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent extracts the problematic element (spaces between top plates) from the system. By eliminating these spaces through overlapping plates, the harmful effect on surface smoothness is removed, allowing thinner felt cover usage.
3Manufacturing precision
If a thicker felt cover is used to avoid marks, then surface smoothness is improved, but drying effect decreases due to reduced ventilation
Solution Approach 1:
The overlapping top plates eliminate spaces that would otherwise require a thicker felt cover, thereby maintaining the thin felt cover design that enables effective ventilation and drying.
Solution Approach 2:
By taking out the spaces between top plates through overlapping arrangement, the patent preserves the ventilation pathways through the felt cover, maintaining high drying efficiency while achieving surface smoothness.
Data Source
AI summary
An elongate spring pad for a sheet ironing machine includes an elongate backing strip, coil springs, and top plates. The backing strip encircles a roller of a sheet ironing machine. The coil springs are longitudinally spaced along the backing strip. Each coil spring has a connecting portion at a first end engaging the backing strip and a fixing portion at a second, opposite end that transverses the coil spring. Each of the top plates is provided on the second end of the respective coil spring. Positioning means on each top plate engage the respective coil spring. A claw projects outwardly from the top plate for releasably engaging a felt cover. Each top plate contacts an adjacent top plate so that there are no spaces therebetween.