MAGNETICALLY-JOINABLE PLAY TILES
A magnetically joinable play tile comprising a tile body having an edge; and a rotatable magnet carried by tile body adjacent to the edge.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 62/379,120, filed Aug. 24, 2016, which is incorporated by reference herein.
BACKGROUND Field of the InventionThe present invention relates to magnetically-joinable play tiles.
Related ArtMagnetically joinable play tiles provide interesting and educational diversion for children. Because they are mainly joined by magnetic force (without snaps, tab/slot pairs, screws, or other fastening means), such tiles (often manufactured in various geometrical shapes such as triangles, rectangles, etc.) can, in play, be arranged and quickly re-arranged into myriad configurations. This invention concerns improvements for such tiles, specifically in the areas of play flexibility and manufacturing cost.
SUMMARYAn aspect of the invention provides additional play flexibility by means of multi-pole self-aligning magnets and mechanical tile alignment supports that allow additional tile assembly variations and more stable tile assembly configurations compared to prior art.
Another aspect of the invention involves a magnetically joinable play tile comprising a tile body having an edge; and a rotatable magnet carried by tile body adjacent to the edge.
One or more implementations of the aspect of the invention immediately above includes one or more of the following: the tile body is a uni-body and the rotatable magnet is carried within the uni-body for rotation therein; the tile body includes a receiving pocket and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly receivable in the receiving pocket, and the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein; the magnetic cartridge assembly includes a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly; the tile body includes a tile-body cut-out and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly that attaches onto the tile body whereby the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein and the rotatable magnet is disposed in the tile-body cut-out; the magnetic cartridge assembly includes a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly; a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly; the rotatable magnet is disposed adjacent to the mechanical tile alignment support; the rotatable magnet is disposed not adjacent to the mechanical tile alignment support; the rotatable magnet is a cylindrical magnets with four poles, two North poles and two South poles; the rotatable magnet includes two two-pole magnets joined end-to-end, forming a four-pole magnet having an abrupt field reversal along its length; the rotatable magnet includes a shape of one of a sphere, a zone of sphere, a segment of sphere, a hemisphere, a spherical sector, an ellipsoid, an oblate spheroid, a prolate spheroid, a conoid, a non-right cylinder, a truncated cylinder, a cone, a truncated cone, a truncated right circular cone, and a frustum of right circular cone; the tiles includes magnet includes a shape of one of a sphere, a zone of sphere, a segment of sphere, a hemisphere, a spherical sector, an ellipsoid, an oblate spheroid, a prolate spheroid, a conoid, a non-right cylinder, a truncated cylinder, a cone, a truncated cone, a truncated right circular cone, and a frustum of right circular cone; the tile body is made of one of corrugated cardboard and paper-faced foam board, and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly that attaches onto the tile body whereby the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein; and/or the mechanical tile alignment support includes one or more of splines, knurled surfaces, rough surfaces, fractal surfaces, adhesive-coated surfaces, hook-loop pairs, tab/slot pairs, rounded/convex ends, rounded/concave grooves, rounded/concave channels.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art after reviewing the following detailed description and accompanying drawings.
The details of the present invention, both as to its structure and operation, may be gleaned in part by study of the accompanying drawings, in which like reference numerals refer to like parts, and in which:
Magnetically joinable play tiles provide interesting and educational diversion for children. Because they are only bound by magnetic force (without snaps, tabs/slots, screws, or other fastening means), such tiles (which are often manufactured of polymer material by means of injection molding in various geometrical shapes such as triangles, rectangles, etc.) can, in play, be arranged and quickly re-arranged into myriad configurations. This invention concerns improvements for such tiles, specifically in the areas of play flexibility and manufacturing cost.
Mutual attraction of permanent magnets is widely employed in temporary and easily movable fastening applications. As is well known, permanent magnets have “poles” (“north” and “south” modeled after the earth's present natural magnetic field direction), which exhibit an attractive force toward opposite poles of other permanent magnets. Magnetic fields associated with the magnets' poles are modeled by “magnetic flux lines” (continuous lines “circulating” through north and south poles and back around again) as an aid to calculating magnetic forces. In general, attractive forces between two two-pole magnets (each with North and south poles) are in the direction that decreases the length of the flux lines (until mutual contact or other physical barriers prevent further motion of the magnets, thus creating a mechanically stable physical configuration).
If two two-pole permanent magnets are embedded into other objects, then the two objects will exhibit a mutual attraction (depending on the magnets' poles' orientation).
Prior art magnetically joinable play tiles have embedded two-pole magnets as to provide temporary and easily movable tile assembly by means of mutual attraction between tiles.
Prior art magnetically joinable play tiles have embedded magnets provided in co-linear pairs, with opposite polar orientations, so as to provide attraction along any two similar-length tile edges, such as provided by magnet pairs 43 and 44 along edges 45 and 46 of tiles 41 and 42, respectively, regardless of tile orientation.
A further disadvantage of the early prior art is that the magnets must be provided in pairs, in order to provide the aforementioned attraction along any two similar-length tile edges, irrespective of tile orientation. Since magnets are the most expensive component in a magnetic-tile system, providing them in pairs can result in higher manufacturing cost.
An aspect of this invention involves magnetic tiles having improved rotating magnets with four or more magnetic poles.
Since any pair of magnets can arrange themselves into a mutual-attraction configuration, as aspect of the invention eliminates the prior art's requirement of co-linear magnet pairs within each tile (so as to provide assembly in either “flipped” configuration of the tiles, as shown in
The cylindrical shape is but one example of the many types of magnet shapes that can be used to realize the aspects of the invention described herein. Other magnet shapes, include, but are not limited to, a sphere, zone of sphere, segment of sphere, hemisphere, spherical sector, ellipsoid, oblate spheroid, prolate spheroid (or any other conoid), non-right cylinder, truncated cylinder, cone, truncated cone, truncated right circular cone, frustum of right circular cone, or other three-dimensional curvilinear body that can be embedded within magnetic play tiles and allowed to rotate freely around an axis.
Another aspect of this invention is shown in
Although the mechanical alignment support(s) are shown as a plurality of splines, in alternative embodiment, the mechanical alignment supports may be, but not by way of limitation, knurled surfaces, rough surfaces, fractal surfaces, adhesive-coated surfaces, hook-loop pairs, tab/slot pairs, etc. Within the implementation where the mechanical alignment support(s) are splines, the splines may have rounded/convex ends and/or rounded/concave grooves or channels. The mechanical alignment support(s) may be one or more mechanical alignment supports disposed at one or more locations along the edge that the magnet(s) is along. The one or more locations may include the corner(s) of the tiles. In a preferred implementation, as shown in
The magnetic tiles of the aspects, embodiments, and implementations of the invention described herein include different geometric shapes (e.g., squares, rectangles, triangles, polygons). The tiles are preferably made of plastic and injected molded into two halves of a hard plastic material. The magnets are added into magnet receiving pockets of one of the halves, and the halves are assembled/fastened together (e.g., riveted together, snapped together, sonically welded together). In alternative embodiments, the tiles are made of materials other than plastic (e.g., foam) and/or are manufactured by other manufacturing methods.
As an alternate embodiment to inserting magnets into tiles' receiving pockets, magnets may be contained in a magnet-cartridge assembly. Assembled magnet cartridges may be inserted into tiles' receiving pockets.
In embodiments where the tile material is incompatible with both containing magnets and realizing a mechanical-alignment support system, an attachable magnet-cartridge assembly may be provided.
The two-part embodiment allows tiles to be made of low-cost construction materials such as corrugated cardboard, paper-faced foam board, etc. that can be formed into shapes by die-cutting, for which tooling and production is less expensive than injection molding. By using low-cost material and manufacturing methods, tiles may be inexpensively made much larger than injection-molded tiles. Also, various tile materials may be decorated (by means of popular low-cost printing methods) for colorful appearance or to resemble objects (including but not limited to) houses, castles, boats, military equipment, forts, buildings, trucks, space-travel vessels and so on.
Magnetic assembly of such tiles, while firm enough to provide basic structural integrity, yet would permit “destruction” (i.e. disassembly into constituent tiles) by manual impact or by projectiles. Inasmuch as this type of play is very common (particularly among male children) this embodiment would very likely engender much play.
While various embodiments of the present invention have been described above, it should be understood that they have been presented by way of example only, and not of limitation. Likewise, the various diagrams may depict an example architectural or other configuration for the disclosure, which is done to aid in understanding the features and functionality that can be included in the disclosure. The invention is not restricted to the illustrated example architectures or configurations, but the desired features can be implemented using a variety of alternative architectures and configurations. Indeed, it will be apparent to one of skill in the art how alternative functional, logical or physical partitioning and configurations can be implemented to implement the desired features of the present disclosure.
Although the disclosure is described above in terms of various exemplary embodiments and implementations, it should be understood that the various features, aspects and functionality described in one or more of the individual embodiments are not limited in their applicability to the particular embodiment with which they are described, but instead can be applied, alone or in various combinations, to one or more of the other embodiments of the disclosure, whether or not such embodiments are described and whether or not such features are presented as being a part of a described embodiment. Thus, the breadth and scope of the present disclosure should not be limited by any of the above-described exemplary embodiments.
Terms and phrases used in this document, and variations thereof, unless otherwise expressly stated, should be construed as open ended as opposed to limiting. As examples of the foregoing: the term “including” should be read as meaning “including, without limitation” or the like; the term “example” is used to provide exemplary instances of the item in discussion, not an exhaustive or limiting list thereof; the terms “a” or “an” should be read as meaning “at least one,” “one or more” or the like; and adjectives such as “conventional,” “traditional,” “normal,” “standard,” “known” and terms of similar meaning should not be construed as limiting the item described to a given time period or to an item available as of a given time, but instead should be read to encompass conventional, traditional, normal, or standard technologies that may be available or known now or at any time in the future. Likewise, where this document refers to technologies that would be apparent or known to one of ordinary skill in the art, such technologies encompass those apparent or known to the skilled artisan now or at any time in the future.
The presence of broadening words and phrases such as “one or more,” “at least,” “but not limited to” or other like phrases in some instances shall not be read to mean that the narrower case is intended or required in instances where such broadening phrases may be absent.
Claims
1. A magnetically joinable play tile, comprising:
- a tile body having an edge;
- a rotatable magnet carried by tile body adjacent to the edge.
2. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the tile body is a uni-body and the rotatable magnet is carried within the uni-body for rotation therein.
3. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the tile body includes a receiving pocket and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly receivable in the receiving pocket, and the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein.
4. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 3, wherein the magnetic cartridge assembly includes a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly.
5. The magnetically-joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the tile body includes a tile-body cut-out and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly that attaches onto the tile body whereby the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein and the rotatable magnet is disposed in the tile-body cut-out.
6. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 5, wherein the magnetic cartridge assembly includes a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly.
7. The magnetically-joinable play tile of claim 1, further including a mechanical tile alignment support that enables stable edge-to-edge tile assembly.
8. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 7, wherein the rotatable magnet is disposed adjacent to the mechanical tile alignment support.
9. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 7, wherein the rotatable magnet is disposed not adjacent to the mechanical tile alignment support.
10. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the rotatable magnet is a cylindrical magnets with four poles, two North poles and two South poles.
11. The magnetically-joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the rotatable magnet includes two two-pole magnets joined end-to-end, forming a four-pole magnet having an abrupt field reversal along its length.
12. The magnetically-joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the rotatable magnet includes a shape of one of a sphere, a zone of sphere, a segment of sphere, a hemisphere, a spherical sector, an ellipsoid, an oblate spheroid, a prolate spheroid, a conoid, a non-right cylinder, a truncated cylinder, a cone, a truncated cone, a truncated right circular cone, and a frustum of right circular cone.
13. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the tiles includes magnet includes a shape of one of a sphere, a zone of sphere, a segment of sphere, a hemisphere, a spherical sector, an ellipsoid, an oblate spheroid, a prolate spheroid, a conoid, a non-right cylinder, a truncated cylinder, a cone, a truncated cone, a truncated right circular cone, and a frustum of right circular cone.
14. The magnetically joinable play tile of claim 1, wherein the tile body is made of one of corrugated cardboard and paper-faced foam board, and further including a magnetic cartridge assembly that attaches onto the tile body whereby the magnetic cartridge assembly includes the rotatable magnet therein.
15. The magnetically-joinable play tile of claim 7, wherein the mechanical alignment supports include one or more of splines, knurled surfaces, rough surfaces, fractal surfaces, adhesive-coated surfaces, hook-loop pairs, tab/slot pairs, rounded/convex ends, rounded/concave grooves, rounded/concave channels.
Type: Application
Filed: Aug 24, 2017
Publication Date: Mar 1, 2018
Inventors: Eric S. Micko (Singapore), Stephen C. Beuerle (San Diego, CA), Zhao-Hua Liao (Shenzhen), Gary E. Friar (Saint Cloud, FL)
Application Number: 15/685,817