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US 2008/0187161 A1Published application
Earbud and method of manufacture
AssigneeHoneywell International Inc.
InventorsJim Tiemens, Stephen D. Gilder
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
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AssigneeHoneywell International Inc.
InventorsJim Tiemens, Stephen D. Gilder
Estimating the term…
An earbud (10) for carrying sound from a source (16) to a person's ear canal, includes a soft foam body (20) and a sleeve (26) of stiffer material lying within the body. The body is molded around the sleeve and is chemically bonded to the sleeve without an adhesive between them. The earbud is molded around the sleeve by placing the sleeve on a mandrel pin (42) within a mold cavity (32), placing foamable material in the mold and closing the mold. The mold has shoulders with one mold shoulder (52) that abuts one end (46) of the sleeve and another mold shoulder (60) that lies within 0.1 millimeter of the other sleeve end (62), to prevent foaming material from leaking into the space (64) between the mandrel pin and the sleeve passage.
A method for constructing an earbud with a soft body of elastomeric body material that has an axis and a through body passage extending along said axis, including forming a sleeve of stiffer material than said body material to lie within said body passage with said sleeve having a sleeve passage, comprising:
An earbud for carrying sound from a particular source to a person's ear canal while blocking the passage of most sound in the environment from the person's ear canal, which includes a soft elastomeric body having front and rear ends and having a body passage that extends along an axis between said body ends, and a sleeve of material that is stiffer than the material with said sleeve having front and rear ends and lying in said body passage and having a sleeve passage extending between said sleeve ends, wherein:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.