The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Sep. 24, 1991
Filed:
Jan. 18, 1990
Gerald A Doty, Crown Point, IN (US);
James L Zygutis, Frankfort, IL (US);
Occupant Safety Systems Inc., Olympia Fields, IL (US);
Abstract
A compact safety belt retractor is provided with a large coil of webbing on a rotatable reel and locking pawl teeth are able to have locking engagement with toothed wheels on the reel even when the coil of webbing has a larger diameter than the diameter of a circle defined by the teeth of the ratchet wheels. The coil of webbing preferably extends the full depth of the retractor from front edges of the sidewalls of the frame to the rear frame wall of the retractor. Thus, a large coil of webbing may be stored for the depth of the retractor. To reduce the side-to-side width of retractor, it is preferred to have reel ratchet wheels mounted in the plane of the frame sidewalls and to have the pawl teeth also mounted in openings in the sidewalls of the retractor frame. The pawl teeth are elongated columns and are loaded in columnar manner with substantially small shear or bending stresses thereon. At very high loading on the belt, as at the time of accident, the reel may deflect to shift the toothed wheels to directly engage the bearing surfaces on the sidewalls of the frame when the reel is locked. Both the locking pawls and the toothed wheels are substantially coplanar with the sidewalls of the frame and are disposed within openings in the sidewalls.