Patent ID: 7654273
Filing Date: 2010-02-02
Classification: A61C

Abstract:
1. A refillable dental flosser dispensing kit for storing and sequentially dispensing a plurality of similarly configured single-use dental flossers each of which dental flossers has an elongated handle with head and tail ends, a pair of spaced apart fingers depending from the head end and supporting a length of floss strung therebetween, first and second sides defining a flosser width, and an edge extending between the first and second sides and defining a flosser profile as viewed from one of the first and second sides, the kit comprising: a housing having (i) at least one housing side wall with an exterior surface and an interior surface defining an internal storage cavity with a predetermined cavity configuration, (ii) a refill opening through which a supply of dental flossers can be introduced into the storage cavity, and (iii) a dispensing end including a dispensing-end wall that, in combination with at least one of the at least one housing side walls, defines a side-emitting dispensing slot having predetermined slot-width and slot-length dimensions; a closure for selectively closing the refill opening; a refill cartridge having at least one cartridge side wall with an outer surface defining an external cartridge configuration and an inner surface defining an inner storage channel with a predetermined channel configuration capable of storing, and maintaining in side-by-side serial arrangement in accordance with a predetermined storage orientation, a plurality of the dental flossers, the cartridge further having a first end sufficiently closed by a first-end wall to prevent the discharge from within the channel of a dental flosser and a second end that is opposite the first end and includes a second-end opening sufficiently large to facilitate the passage from within the channel of a flosser situated in accordance with the predetermined storage orientation; wherein (i) the refill cartridge is externally configured for disposition within the storage cavity of the housing such that the second-end opening of the refill cartridge is situated between the first end of the refill cartridge and the dispensing-end wall of the housing; (ii) the slot-width dimension is sized so as to permit the edgewise extraction from the storage cavity of a single dental flosser aligned with the dispensing slot while precluding the extraction of more than one dental flosser at a time and (iii) an at least one dental flosser stored within the channel is positionally biased by a biasing force toward the dispensing-end wall for alignment with the dispensing slot such that, as each successive flosser is extracted from the storage cavity through the dispensing slot, each remaining flosser is incrementally advanced toward the dispensing-end wall by a distance corresponding to a single flosser width.