Rite-hite Holding Corporation

Deere + Company

Wayne E Gruben

Peter S Schulte

James P Schwingle

Dean L Heino

A curtain guiding assembly for an industrial door is disclosed. The curtain guiding assembly is provided with a resilient member disposed adjacent the leading edge of a door curtain. The resilient member is substantially untensioned when no external force is applied to the door curtain and is adapted to at least partially conform to or at least partially deflect about encountered obstacles. The resilient member becomes tensioned upon application of an external force less than a first predetermined threshold and returns to its substantially untensioned state upon removal of the external force.

Curtain guiding assembly for a soft edge door with a selectively

An omni-directional breakaway guide assembly for use in conjunction with an edge member in an industrial door. The guide assembly comprises a guide extension for engaging guide members to guide the door in a plane, and an edge member portion coupled to the edge member. The breakaway guide assembly includes a releasable coupling between the guide extension and the edge member portion. Upon application of a sufficient force on the edge member at least one of the edge member portion and the guide extension portion deforms to allow the edge member portion to breakaway from the guide extension portion. Such breakaway may occur for forces applied in a variety of directions to the edge member.

Releaseable assembly for a door

A curtain edge tensioning assembly comprised primarily of a portion of the curtain extending across the leading edge of the door. The curtain portion is releasably coupled to a guide extension extending beyond the leading edge of the door and engaging guide members to guide the door in a plane. The guide extensions also engage the guide members to restrict the guide extensions from moving toward the center of the curtain. The releasable coupling between these horizontally restricted guide extensions and the resilient member places a tension on the curtain portion. The curtain portion is thus stretched across the door, and serves as a wind retention bottom bar or edge that also substantially conforms to or deflects around an obstruction, thus preventing or minimizing damage to the door, the bottom bar and the obstruction.

Curtain bottom tensioning assembly

An electronically controlled transmission system includes an engine driven torque converter driving a planetary gear transmission. The torque converter is lockable by a lockup solenoid valve to provide a direct through drive and the planetary gear transmission is shiftable among a plurality of gear ratios by selected operation of solenoid operated valves which control power to clutch- and brake-selected transmission gears. An automatic electronic control provides for a 'work' mode of transmission operation wherein a shift control provides for manual shifting over a first set of selected gear ratios and for automatic, speed dependent shifting over a second set of selected gear ratios while torque converter lockup inhibition is provided for both sets of ratios. The automatic electronic control further provides for a 'transport' mode of transmission operation wherein the shift control provides for manual shifting over a third set of selected gear ratios and for automatic, speed dependent shifting over a fourth set of selected ratios while automatic torque converter lockup is provided for the upper speeds of each of the gear ratios in the third and fourth sets of ratios. The automatic electronic control still further incorporates hysteresis and time delay automatic shifting to prevent speed related hunting for the proper gear ratios as well as the downshift control to prevent manual downshifting at excessive speeds. A manual override and a hold for holding any automatically selected gear ratio is provided for greater operator control.

Growing community of inventors

Dubuque, IA, United States of America

Wayne E Gruben