US 5,326,337 AGranted

Gymnastic assembly for small children

OwnerEugene C. Pardellainventor

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Abstract

A light weight, portable, gymnastic assembly made for children to climb on is fabricated of tubular members formed of cut-to-length standard plastic tubings and standard plastic fittings. The tubular members are releasably held within the sockets of the fittings by pairs of opposing spring-loaded pins that are carried in opposing holes on the end portions of the tubular members and engage within opposing holes on the end portions of sockets of the fittings when the tubular members are slipped into the sockets. Because of the mechanical connections used, such an assembly provides a flexible overall structure that can be readily modified from time-to-time by an adult to enable a number of separately assembled different types of accessories of interest to children to be mounted on the surface of the assembly or within the interior thereof.

Claims17

Dependent claims

A gymnastic assembly for children comprising:

a plurality, of series of uprights;
each series of uprights lying in a vertical plane and all such planes being parallel;
each upright formed of at least three aligned vertical tubular members having adjacent ends;
corner joints for joining adjacent ends of the vertical tubular members;
each corner joint including a pair of vertically disposed four-way fittings, each fitting having horizontal and vertical sockets;
a short vertical tubular member having end portions thereon supported within adjacent vertical sockets of the pair of four-way fittings of each corner joint for joining the fittings together so that the horizontal sockets of one four-way fitting lie in the vertical plane of a series of uprights and the horizontal sockets of the other four-way fitting lie normal to said vertical plane;
horizontal tubular members having end portions supported within the horizontal sockets of the four-way fittings in the corner joints on adjacent uprights lying in the same vertical plane;
cross horizontal tubular members having end portions supported within the horizontal sockets of the four-way fittings of the corner joints on corresponding uprights lying in adjacent vertical planes;
and
locking means for releasably retaining the tubular members within the sockets of the corner joints.

7 more elements

A gymnastic assembly for children comprising:

a base support comprised of a plurality of series of three-way fittings, each of the fittings having horizontally disposed sockets interconnected by tubular members and vertically disposed branch sockets;
the branch sockets of the three way fittings in each series being equally spaced from each other and from the branch sockets of corresponding three-way fittings in adjacent series of three-way fittings thereby providing a base support having branch sockets thereon that define corners of squares extending throughout the width and length thereof;
a plurality of uprights, each upright formed of at least three aligned vertical tubular members having adjacent ends;
corner joints for joining adjacent ends of the vertical tubular members of each of the uprights;
each said corner joint including an upper and lower vertically disposed four-way fitting, each fitting having horizontal and vertical sockets thereon;
a short vertical tubular member having end portions thereon supported within adjacent vertical sockets of the upper and lower four-way fittings of each corner joint for joining the fittings together so that the horizontal sockets thereon are oriented at 90 degrees with respect to each other;
each upright having its bottom end engaged in the branch socket of one of the three-way fittings on the base support whereby all the uprights engaged on a series of three-way fittings on the base support lie in a vertical plane and wherein the horizontal sockets of the upper four-way fittings of the corner joints on the uprights lie in the vertical plane of the series of uprights and the horizontal sockets of the lower four-way fittings of the corner joints on the uprights lie normal to said vertical plane;
horizontal tubular members having end portions supported within the horizontal sockets of the upper four-way fittings of corner joints on adjacent uprights lying in the vertical plane of a series of uprights;
cross horizontal tubular members having end portions supported within the horizontal sockets of the lower four-way fittings of the corner joints on corresponding uprights lying in adjacent planes;
and
locking means for releasably retaining the tubular members within the sockets of the fittings.

8 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.