Gloves are manufactured all over the world, including the United States, China, Europe, East Asia, and Canada, by many glove companies. Moreover, innumerable styles/types of gloves, mittens and other hand coverings are manufactured, including commercial, industrial, and safety gloves, such as, military, fireman, and welder's gloves, and sport and recreational gloves, used for skiing, snowboarding, mountaineering, cycling, golf, baseball, scuba diving, hunting, sky diving, spelunking, gardening etc (hereinafter collectively referred to as a “glove”). In the glove manufacturing industry it is becoming increasingly important to ensure that manufactured gloves meet certain specifications as there are a number of different standards relating to gloves, including sizing and other health and safety aspects.
The importance of product verification has long been recognized, particularly in the fields of manufacturing, testing, and quality control. It is often necessary or desirable for glove manufacturers to ensure that manufactured gloves comply with customer specifications and/or with industry/regulatory standards. However, the glove dimension verification process is complicated by the fact that one glove factory likely produces many different sizes and styles of gloves for many different companies. Further, the thickness and stretchability of different materials may vary considerably, thus making the process of obtaining precision internal measurements more difficult. Thus, it is important to provide a device for measuring dimensions of a glove which is capable of quickly and accurately measuring many different sizes and styles of gloves, and to demonstrate repeatability and quality control in manufacturing.
Quality control and product verification also have a dramatic impact on a manufacturer's sales and revenue. It is critical for a manufacturer to quantitatively establish product compliance and/or tolerance levels in order to attract, maintain, and satisfy customers. It is also critical for a manufacturer to demonstrate that a finished glove is as ordered and that it complies with all product specifications. As such, it is often necessary or desirable to, however, to allow quality control personnel and/or customers to quickly and reliably verify product compliance with glove specifications.
The difficulty with product verification is exacerbated by the fact that most garments, especially gloves, are hand-sewn. The dimensions of hand-sewn gloves have the potential to vary greatly because different individuals sew the gloves. This is problematic because glove manufacturers need to be able to verify and ensure that the gloves are the same size and meet the same specifications. Product compliance and verification is also important because consumer comfort depends on a glove fitting properly. Thus, it would be advantageous to provide an internal glove sizing device that can quickly and accurately determine whether a glove meets certain product specifications.
FIGS. 1-7 show various prior art devices that have attempted to measure dimensions of a glove. The prior art glove measuring tools have a number of disadvantages. For example, conventional glove measuring tools require a person to manually measure each glove in order to ascertain whether it meets the product specification. As a result, product verification is imprecise and inaccurate because each person may read the measurements differently or may measure the glove at different locations. Thus, it is important to provide a glove sizing device which increases the reliability of the verification process by reducing and/or eliminating human discrepancy and/or error.
Additionally, because a person must manually record the individual measurements of each glove, typical glove sizing tools are labor intensive and the verification process is time consuming. This is undesirable if the manufacturer wants to reduce time and costs. Therefore, it is desirable to provide a system for measuring glove dimensions which quickly and cost effectively verifies that the glove complies with specific product specifications.
Prior art glove sizing devices have conventionally been designed to measure external dimensions and provide limited information regarding internal compliance with glove specifications. For example, glove sizing tools typically measure the external circumference and/or length. However, many glove specifications are made with respect to internal dimensions. Depending on the thickness and style, it is difficult if not impossible to accurately measure and verify the internal dimensions of a glove using conventional means.
Some glove sizing tools have attempted to measure internal glove dimensions; however, such tools typically are manual, time consuming, and inaccurate. For example, in the prior art device shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, there is no substantive standard that can be employed to determine and/or verify how hard to stretch the glove, how far to insert the measuring device into the glove, etc. Thus, it would be advantageous to have a device for measuring the internal dimensions of a glove that is automated, quick, and accurate.
Moreover, typical glove sizing tools do not account for the type of material used. Gloves are manufactured from many different types of materials, including cloth, fabric, knitted or felted wool, leather, cashmere, nylon, polyester, fleece, spandex, polyurethane, rubber, latex, and neoprene. Conventional glove sizing tools are typically made to work only for one particular type of material and are unable to account for different glove materials. This is undesirable because one manufacturing center may produce gloves made from many different materials, such as, leather gloves, wool gloves, textile gloves, etc. Because different materials stretch differently, it is difficult if not impossible to accurately verify the glove's actual dimensions without accounting for material. Thus, it would be beneficial to have a glove measuring system which accounts for the type of material used to make the glove.
Thus, there is a long felt but unsolved need for a measuring device that avoids the above-mentioned deficiencies of the prior art and that is capable of quickly and accurately measuring and verifying the internal dimensions of a variety of sizes and styles of gloves.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds