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US 2008/0148535 A1Published application
Clip for joining tubular members to substrates
AssigneeHope Global, Division of Nfa Corp.
InventorsAndrew W. Santin, Pasquale Rossi
Life of this patent
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AssigneeHope Global, Division of Nfa Corp.
InventorsAndrew W. Santin, Pasquale Rossi
Estimating the term…
This invention provides a clip for joining tubular members that employs living hinges that are part of a unitary clip including jaws and a base spring. The jaws are joined by a center living hinge and each jaw is also joined along a surface opposite its gripping surface to a cantilevered end of the base spring by a side-mounted living hinge. When the clip jaws are in a fully open orientation, with the center hinge at a maximum distance away from the base spring, the user biases the central hinge toward the base spring. The base spring ends are thereby biased away from each other, and after the jaws rotate about their living hinges through a position of maximum spread in the base spring ends, the spring ends rebound, forcing the jaws downward toward the base spring, and into a fully closed orientation. The clip includes a base that can be an anchor that embeds in foam of an upholstery cushion, or can have an adhesive that allows it to be secured to a structure, in the case of a pipe or conduit clamp. The clip can be formed by extrusion, with the hinges optionally coextruded from a more-resilient material. The extrusion can define a strip with cut lines therein that nearly separate the individual clip segments, enabling the clip strip to be stored on a spool and paid out as needed.
A clip for joining a tubular member comprising:
A method for handling a clip for joining tubular members comprising the steps of:
A system for storing a clip for joining tubular members comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.