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US 6,227,454 B1Granted
Device and method for applying night-visible road markings
AssigneeJackson Products, Inc.
InventorsCharles R. Wolf, Howard Schierling
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
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AssigneeJackson Products, Inc.
InventorsCharles R. Wolf, Howard Schierling
Estimating the term…
A device for applying night-visible road markings includes a material hopper, a floor gate, a pair of side runners and a plurality of vertically oriented shutters. When the floor gate is moved away from an outlet extending through a bottom side of the hopper, marking material flows from the hopper, through the outlet and onto the surface of a road. The vertically oriented shutters are positioned between the side runners, which serve as side forms for marking material dispensed onto the road surface, and rearwardly of the hopper outlet. The distance between the bottom edges of the shutters and the road surface determines the amount of marking material that passes thereunder, thereby determining the thickness of the road marking. By positioning the shutters at different relative elevations, road markings of various patterns including markings having varying thicknesses across their width can be produced for increased reflectivity of the road markings.
A road marking device comprising a hopper for holding marking material, said hopper including an outlet for dispensing said marking material onto a road surface, and a plurality of shutters adjacent the outlet for controlling the thickness of marking material dispensed onto said road surface by said device, said shutters are positioned adjacent to one another and to the outlet and are configured for selective movement into different positions relative to each other and the outlet for dispensing marking material from the outlet and creating a road marking having a varying thickness across its width.
In a road marking device having a bottom opening and a bottom gate selectively movable with respect to said bottom opening between open and closed positions, the device being configured to dispense marking material through the bottom opening and onto a road surface when the bottom gate is in the open position, the improvement comprising at least two shutters substantially aligned with said bottom opening for controlling the thickness of any marking material dispensed therethrough, the at least two shutters being independently moveable relative to each other to dispense two separate thicknesses of the marking material from the bottom opening.
A method of marking a road surface, the method comprising the steps of applying onto said road surface a layer of marking material having a lateral width and varying the thickness of the applied material across its width.
A method of using a road marking device having at least two shutters that have independently adjustable elevations, the method comprising the steps of dispensing marking material from said device and adjusting the elevations of the at least two shutters to thereby yield a road marking having a varying thickness across its width.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.