Wiper Lip Structure for Stable Suction and Streak-Free Cleaning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing cleaning devices struggle to provide consistent and streak-free cleaning across various contact pressures and angles, often resulting in inefficient liquid-air mixture absorption and residue left on surfaces.
Innovation Solution
A cleaning device with flexible wiper lips, including a third middle lip that deforms with the second lip, and recesses on the wiper lips to maintain a constant suction flow, ensuring effective liquid absorption and residue-free cleaning regardless of user pressure or angle.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the wiper lips are made rigid to maintain structural stability, then the device structure is simple and easy to manufacture, but the cleaning results become inconsistent when contact pressure or angle varies
Solution Approach 1:
The wiper lips are designed to be flexible rather than rigid, allowing them to dynamically adapt their shape and position in response to varying contact pressures and angles. This flexibility enables the lips to maintain optimal contact with the surface across different operating conditions, ensuring consistent cleaning results without requiring complex active control mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The flexibility of the wiper lips allows their physical parameters (shape, curvature, contact area) to change automatically in response to variations in contact pressure and angle. This passive adaptation through parameter changes enables the device to maintain effective cleaning performance across a wide range of operating conditions.
2Reliability
If the wiper lips are made flexible to adapt to surface variations, then cleaning consistency improves, but the suction flow becomes unstable
Solution Approach 1:
The third lip is designed with different properties than the first and second lips - specifically, it has recesses that create a channel structure. This local differentiation allows the third lip to stabilize the suction flow path while the first and second lips provide flexible surface contact. The channel structure in the third lip maintains a stable fluid passage even as the other lips deform to adapt to surface variations.
Solution Approach 2:
The third lip acts as an intermediary element between the flexible first and second lips and the suction system. Its channel structure with recesses provides a stable intermediate flow path that translates the variable contact conditions at the wiping surface into consistent suction flow, decoupling the flexibility needed for adaptation from the stability needed for consistent suction.
3Manufacturing precision
If the suction mouth opening is reduced to improve cleaning precision, then streak-free wiping is achieved, but liquid-air mixture absorption becomes inefficient
Solution Approach 1:
The recesses in the third lip create a three-dimensional channel structure that extends the suction path in the depth dimension. This allows the suction system to effectively access and remove liquid-air mixture from beneath the wiper lips even when the surface opening is small, decoupling the wiping quality (determined by surface opening size) from the absorption efficiency (enhanced by the subsurface channel structure).
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 device achieves consistent cleaning results with flexible wiper lips and recesses, maintaining constant suction flow and preventing streaks and residues across different applications and user interactions.
Implementation Method 1
The second wiper lip (30) has recesses (32) extending from its wiper edge... Liquid can be sucked off from below the second wiper lip or between the second wiper lip, possibly pressed flat against the surface, and the hard surface to be cleaned
Implementation Method 2
a suction flow can be provided in the area of the suction mouth and from below the second scraper lip. This enables streak-free and/or residue-free processing both when pulling off and when lifting the device from the surface to be cleaned
Data Source
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AI summary
The invention relates to a cleaning device (16), especially a cleaning attachment (17) for hard surface vacuum cleaner (10), comprising at least a first and a second wiper lip (28, 30). It is proposed that a third lip (76) is arranged between the first and the second wiper lip (28, 30) in order to space apart the first and the second wiper lip (28, 30).