Other

Kids Only, Inc.

Michael Kossak

Paul J Kotowski

Douglas Arthur Schultheis

Richard A Daley

Bernard A Fitzmorris

Ted Lubin

Paul Mulhauser

Dalita R Tomellini

Judith Ann Shackelford

Ronald J Campanell

Dexter C Liu

A dental flossing device is characterized by a flossing circuit comprised of a flossing supply spool and a take-up spool mounted to a housing. The floss feeds from the supply spool along a pair of prongs forming a fork extension of the handle and is stretched across the prongs and appropriately tensioned to be inserted into a users mouth for flossing. To maintain tension, a pair of ratchet pawls are jointly engageable with a ratchet mounted for co-rotation with the take-up spool. The pawls are offset relative to the ratchet teeth to ensure appropriate tension. Tension on the supply spool side of the flosser is achieved with a tension arm in constant engagement with tension teeth co-rotatably mounted with the spool. When a floss advancing trigger is not depressed, a brake pawl formed at one end of the trigger is spring biased into locking engagement with these teeth while the tension arm assures proper tension on the supply side. In an alternative preferred embodiment, only one tensioning ratchet pawl engages the ratchet mounted for co-rotation with the take-up spool. A different ratchet pawl, mounted to one end of a ratchet arm pivotally secured to the flosser housing beneath the ratchet, is engaged by the trigger to drivingly contact the ratchet to rotate the take-up spool. In this latter embodiment, the brake pawl is replaced with a projection formed on the trigger that is adapted to engage the supply spool tensioning ratchet to lock the ratchet in the released position of the trigger to prevent supply spool rotation and maintain the floss circuit in a tight condition.

Manually held dental flossers

A disc discharging toy includes a body having a hand grip; a plurality of resilient discs; a magazine mounted on the body and containing the plurality of resilient discs in a stacked position; and a single drive roller driven by a motor and imparting a discharge force to each disc when fed into a discharge position wherein the drive roller has an axis of rotation perpendicular to the axis of each resilient disc.

Disc discharging device

A dental flossing device is characterized by a flossing circuit comprising a floss supply spool and a take-up spool mounted to a housing containing a gear train assembly adapted to rotate the take-up spool in a winding direction. The floss feeds from the supply spool along a pair of prongs forming a forked extension of the handle and is stretched across the forked prongs and appropriately tensioned to be inserted into a user's mouth for flossing. To maintain hygiene, the take-up spool is mounted outside the housing. In a manually operated embodiment, a manually depressible trigger projecting from the housing is operable to rotate the take-up spool with reverse rotation thereof being prevented with a ratchet mechanism. Release of the manually depressible trigger reversely rotates the supply spool through a short arcuate interval to remove slack and then locks the supply spool against unwinding rotation through gear teeth. In a preferred manually operated embodiment, first and second ratchet mechanisms are utilized to prevent reverse rotation of the supply and take-up spools while sufficiently tensioning the floss circuit. In other embodiments, the housing may be formed for mounting the flossing device as an attachment to a hand-held motorized toothbrush handle equipped with a motor from which projects and output shaft. Depending upon the model, the gear train assembly may be modified to convert longitudinal stroking motion of the shaft or oscillatory motion into uni-directional rotating motion to rotate the take-up spool in one direction only.

Flossing equipment and method of operation

An index tray is pivoted in a housing, the tray having a recess for receiving a sticky coated disc and resiliently urged out of the housing for receiving the disc. An alignment detent device holds the tray in a retracted position in the housing cavity with the disc aligned at a predetermined location. A sheet of paper with pictorial or graphical indicia thereon is inserted into the cavity above the tray and disc. A transparent cylindrical press knob permits visual alignment of the indicia to the disc. Blades attached to the knob lower edge penetrate the sheet when the knob is depressed. A clamp coupled to the knob clamps the sheet to the tray in response to depressing the knob. After the knob is depressed, it is permitted to rotate in one direction only by a ratchet device to sever the sheet into a mating disc shape for attachment to the sticky surface of the disc on the tray. After the sheet is cut, the knob is lifted automatically and the tray, when released, springs open. An ejector mechanism on the tray ejects the completed decorative disc from the tray. An interlock precludes the blades from engaging the tray before the tray is placed in the cutting position.

Toy fabrication device for decorative discs

A toy vehicle includes a body-and-chassis assembly comprising a main portion and a movable body component which is movable relative to the main portion. The toy vehicle further includes a manually operable operating mechanism in the body-and-chassis assembly for moving the movable body component between first and second positions thereof with a relatively slow steady dampened movement which simulates the movement of a body component of a full-sized vehicle.

Growing community of inventors

Foster, RI, United States of America

Paul J Kotowski