Today’s Patent – Door

The said invention (US11859433B2) was invented by Mikhail D. Shapiro, patented by USPTO on 11-12-2021. Currently, it stands assigned to Individual.

The present invention relates to a door configured to be opened and closed all within a plane. More specifically, the present invention is directed to a door configured to be opened and closed all within a plane and the door is an aggregate of cover components. Conventional doors are hinged at one edge or configured to slide along an edge in a plane. If configured to slide along an edge, e.g., in the case of a pocket door, the door is moved in its entirety to clear an opening it conceals to reveal the opening or it is slid over the opening to conceal the opening when the opening is desired to be closed. Even for a hinged door that can be swung out of the way by rotating the door about its hinge axis, the rotational angle that the door is required to traverse is at least about 90 degrees. Therefore, it takes more effort and more time to open or close a door that comes in a single piece than doors that come in more than one piece. Further, for a small area, a hinge door can take up valuable space around the door. When used as a container sized according to human hands, a container with a screw type lid or a container with a hinged door requires its user to unscrew the lid or to rotate the lid out of the way as in the case of the hinged lid, thereby requiring increased effort on the user’s part to open or close the container.

A door for allowing access to an interior space of a housing, one end of the housing is sealed with a cover having a plurality of cover components, the door comprising: a sun gear comprising a rotational axis, the sun gear is attached to the housing; a ring having a central axis coaxially disposed with the rotational axis of the sun gear; and a plurality of planetary gears evenly distributed about the central axis of the ring, each the planetary gear comprising a rotational axis and rotationally coupled to the ring and the sun gear, wherein the rotational axis of each the planetary gear is disposed parallel to the central axis of the ring, wherein each of the cover components is configured to be attached to one of the plurality of planetary gears and when the ring is rotated with respect to the housing, the plurality of cover components separate.