Patent ID: 8323779

Claim:
A cleaning card for use in cleaning internal surfaces of a machine component, said cleaning card including a substrate having a central plane between opposed surfaces thereof, a machine direction dimension defined between opposed end edges and a transverse direction dimension defined between opposed side edges, said opposed surfaces each having a plurality of discrete raised areas, at least some discrete raised areas extending outwardly on each side of said central plane, said discrete raised areas each including a peak and a peripheral wall, said peripheral wall having sloping sections extending from the peak in the machine direction on opposed sides of said peak and being joined to said substrate, said peak of each raised area being intermediate said sloping sections of said raised area and being further from the central plane than the edge of each of said sloping sections joined to said substrate, said cleaning card substrate having an effective thickness between the opposed surfaces that is greater than the nominal thickness between those surfaces for cleaning said internal surfaces when said machine component is closed, and elongate relief means in said substrate, said relief means being elongated in the transverse direction, said transverse direction dimension being greater than the machine-direction dimension of said relief means, said elongate relief means being in machine-direction locations in the substrate that are free of discrete raised areas for preventing the peaks of at least some of said discrete raised areas from flattening toward the central plane to an extent that such peaks will not effectively engage and clean desired internal surfaces of the closed machine component to be cleaned when the cleaning card moves in other than a single, substantially linear plane.