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US 4,928,369 AGranted
Method of making a pleated blind with articulative slat extensions
AssigneeComfortex Corporation
InventorsJohn Schnebly, Thomas J. Marusak
Life of this patent
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AssigneeComfortex Corporation
InventorsJohn Schnebly, Thomas J. Marusak
Estimating the term…
A pleated, variable light-filtering, insulative window treatment. A horizontally or vertically pleated Venetian Blind is fashioned after two distinct processes with blind slats which extend rearwardly of the front pleated covering and, further, are cambered towards a motivation source proximate the planar cover. Articulator cords are used to move the trailing edges of the slat extensions uniformly in one direction while the forward edges of the slats are caused to pivot along the points of juncture of the slat leading edges and the trough lines of the front pleated cover. Upon complete articulation of the cambered slat edges, effecting an enclosure of the air space in the laterally disposed pleats by forming laterally concatenated air columns, a light-reflecting, room-darkening, highly insulative mode is achieved. Two processes, preferred by the inventors, are disclosed for manufacturing the invention's articulatable hinged extension slats, with the pleated fabric, to form the compound shade apparatus.
The method of making a pleated blind having hingably attached to pleat troughs thereof a plurality of slats, said method comprising demarcating on a sheet of shading material transverse lines of fold and areas to receive adhesive-stiffener coating, applying said adhesive-stiffener, and folding said sheet along a first set of said lines to acquire expandable pleats in non-adhesive areas and along a second set of lines to acquire cojoined adhesively bound pleat-trough extensions in and about one-half the width of the adhesive areas.
For an extended, variably light-filtering, insulative curtain that comprises continuous pleated fabric and is adjustable between an extended light-filtering position and a collapsed position, wherein said pleated fabric defined an array of pleats having front-facing crests and rear-facing troughs when in said extended position and wherein said troughs are joined at common lateral edges so that a multiplicity of parallel slats are arrayed behind and attached to said pleated fabric, a front edge of each slat hingably connected to and along the common latreal edge of a trough of each of said pleats so that actuation means may be employed to urge the rear edge of each of said slats toward and into contact with an adjacent slat forming therebetween said contacting slats and their common lateral trough edges an insulative sleeve, the method of making said curtain comprising the steps of creating pleatings in a sheet of shading material while stiffening discrete portions of the pleated material and immediately thereafter joining said discrete portions to themselves in order to form the slats of said curtain, said slats extending articulatively because of said joining from the troughs of said pleats.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.