Gasket retainer for surface mount fluid component
AssigneeCompart Systems Pte. Ltd.
InventorKim Ngoc Vu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A gasket retainer that is absent sharp corners, has apertures of reasonable dimensional tolerance, and may be conveniently made by a variety of manufacturing processes. The retainer is made from thin flat springy material that readily returns to form after slight bending. Representative gasket capturing apertures are of smoothly non-convex outline with major dimension sufficiently large to allow passage of a ring shaped gasket turned on edge and minor dimension sufficiently small to engage, on approximately opposite circular segments that each engage along less than one third of a gasket circumference, a cavity or groove on the outside diameter periphery of the gasket turned flat parallel to the retainer material sheet. Fasteners may be retained by similar apertures.
Claims13
A gasket retainer for use in a fluid delivery system, comprising:
- a base member formed of a substantially flat sheet of material;
- and
- a gasket-capturing aperture having a non-convex periphery disposed in said base member;
- wherein the gasket-capturing aperture includes three periphery portions of the same shape with a major diameter sufficiently large to allow passage of a circular element therethrough and a minor diameter sufficiently small to engage a cavity, groove, or thread on the outside diameter of said circular element, wherein the three periphery portions are curved, and wherein a corner is defined between each one of the three curved periphery portions of the gasket-capturing aperture, and wherein each of the three periphery portions are continuously curved between each of the defined corners;
- and the base member is flexed and then released during the installation of the circular element, and wherein the gasket aperture is configured to retain a gasket in a fluid delivery system by flexing and releasing to engage a gasket periphery.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.