Gas Goggles

The present invention relates to goggles or safety eyeglasses for protection against gases which have a resilient frame with two eye spaces, each surrounded by mounts for holding a lens therein.

In many goggles, the lenses are secured in the mounts in the frame around each eye space by clamps. The clamps are placed around the edge of the mounts and are secured thereto by the use of tightening or screw components which have to be suitably tightened by auxiliary tools to ensure a firm fit and obtain the required sealing-tightness between the lenses and the mounts. Tools are also necessary for changing the lenses if there is a defect or if the lenses become damaged. In addition, since the tightening and screw components are adjusted manually, there is a risk that the sealing-tightness between the lenses and the mounts will not be complete since this depends on careful fitting.

Other goggles and safety eyeglasses are shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,698,857; 2,321,159; and 1,949,595; Reissue No. 12,816, as well as in Canadian Patent No. 457,339 and French Patent No. 421.744. These patents were cited in U.S. Pat. No. 4,908,394 filed Nov. 23, 1988 by the same applicant and inventor. In the goggles described in these references, the lenses are typically held in a recess in the mount only by the pliable and resilient nature of the mount. As a result, the lenses may be dislodged accidentally and over time may cease to have the required sealing-tightness as the mounts become less pliable.

It would be desirable to construct a pair of goggles wherein the lenses are firmly and sealing-tightly held in the mounts by a simple and effective means, thereby obviating the disadvantages of the above-described goggles.

Generally, the present invention pertains to safety eyeglasses. The safety eyeglasses protect a user against gases. The eyeglasses include a pliable frame having a separate eye space surrounding each eye of a user. A lens for each eye space is held in place by a mount. Each mount externally surrounds the outer edge of the corresponding lens and eye space, and has a front edge, a rear edge and a recess therebetween, the latter for receiving the outer edge of the lens. A peripheral groove is formed on the surface of the front edge of each mount and a rigid ring is nondetachably secured in the groove thereby sealingly holding the lens in the recess of the mount. An advantage of the present invention is that the lenses are firmly sealed and tightly clamped in the mounts without using manually adjusted tightening or screw components.

Preferably, the frame also has a single fold bellows for each eye space as more particularly described and shown in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/267,217 filed Nov. 23, 1988, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference as if fully set forth herein.

Other details, objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the following description of the presently preferred embodiment of practicing the invention proceeds.

In the accompanying drawing, a preferred embodiment of the present invention is illustrated, by way of example only, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a plan view of the goggles of the present invention partly in elevation and partly in section; and

FIG. 2 is a close-up of the sectional portion of FIG. 1 showing the mount and lens.

As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, safety eyeglasses substantially comprise a frame 1, made of a resilient and/or pliable material, with a mount 2 for holding each lenses 3 and a bellows 9 for permitting the eyeglasses to be stored in a compact manner. Advantageously, each mount 2 externally surrounds the outer edge of the corresponding lens 3, and has a front edge 4, a rear edge 5 and a recess 8 therebetween, the latter for holding the outer edge of lens 3. A peripheral groove 6 is formed on the surface of the front edge 4 and a ring 7 is fastened therein. Preferably, ring 7 is a flat disc which is inserted into the groove 6 such that it uniformly presses the front edge 4 of mount 2 with prestressing against the lens 3 that has been inserted into recess 8. As a result, the lens 3 is nondetachably secured in the mount 2 and also tightly sealed therein.

While a presently preferred embodiment of practicing the invention has been shown and described with particularity in connection with the accompanying drawings, the invention may otherwise be embodied within the scope of the following claims.