This invention relates in general to storage containers. More particularly, this invention relates to storage containers which have removable lids and which are capable of being stacked on top of one another.
Stackable storage containers with removable lids are well known and have been widely used for the storage of many different types of items, including documents, file folders containing documents, mechanical parts, and various objects. A typical storage container of this type consists of two main parts: a box-like structure and a removable lid usually fabricated from the same material, such as plastic or sheet metal.
When such containers are stacked on top of each other, it is frequently desirable to provide some type of mechanism to hold the stacked individual containers together in order to provide mechanical stability to the array. When the stacked containers are held together, the lids on all but the upper-most container are held in place by the vertical holding force applied to the containers by the holding mechanism. The lid of the upper-most container, however, experiences no such holding force and must be provided with some mechanism to secure the lid to its container.
A common single stage draw latch and complementary catch combination might be used as the mechanism to hold together the individual containers in a stacked configuration. This requires that the draw latch be mounted on each container near the upper margin of a wall and the complementary catch be mounted near the lower margin of the same wall so that the latch loop of a lower container draw latch can engage the catch of the upper adjacent container. While such an arrangement might suffice to perform the function of providing the vertical force required to hold together the stacked containers, it could not be used to secure the lid of the upper-most container due to the fact that a latch loop capable of engaging the catch of an upper adjacent container cannot effectively engage a catch mounted on the lid of the container on which the latch is mounted. Consequently, either some other latching arrangement must be provided or a container must be specially designed to function as the upper-most container and provided with some other type of mechanism to secure to lid to the container.
Some stackable storage containers are constructed according to a unique design for enabling remote electronic searching for objects, such as file folders and documents within such file folders, located somewhere within a collection of storage containers. Commonly assigned pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/694,829 filed Jan. 8, 2013 for “Storage Container For Electronically Addressable File Folders And Documents”, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, discloses such a container design. Each container is provided with a pair of electrically conductive support rails mounted in the interior near the top margin. The rails are laterally spaced by an amount designed to receive the ends of support braces incorporated into file folders removably placed within the container to provide both mechanical support for the file folders and electrical connections to circuitry including an address decoder located within the file folder support braces. A circuit board is mounted in the container and contains electronic circuitry for receiving unique address signals supplied by a host computer which identify a folder or document to be located. The rails are individually coupled to the electronic circuitry: one of the rails receives the address signals and supplies them to all file folders residing in the container; the other rail furnishes response signals from the file folders to the electronic circuitry of the container circuit board. Each container also has a visible indicator coupled to the electronic circuitry which is illuminated whenever the address signals specify a file folder or document located in that container. An input connector and an output connector are mounted on the container: the input connector receives the address signals from the host computer via a local controller; the output connector couples address signals from one container to another container.
FIG. 1 illustrates a stacked array of such storage containers. As seen in this Fig., a plurality of storage containers 10-1, 10-2, . . . , 10-6 are stacked in a vertical array. Each container has an input connector 16-1, 16-2, . . . , 16-6; and an output connector 14-1, 14-2, . . . , 14-6. A local controller 18 receives address signals from a remote host computer (not shown) and supplies these signals to one of the containers 10-1 by means of input cable 19 and input connector 16-1 of container 10-1. The address input signals are coupled to the remaining containers in the stack by means of jumper cables 12-1, 12-2, . . . , 12-5 which are individually connected between the output connector of one container to the input connector of the adjacent container.
The arrangement of FIG. 1 has no provision for holding together the individual containers or for securing the lid of the uppermost container. In addition, the requirement for individually electrically coupling together the individual containers with jumper cables 12i is less than optimal since it requires the installer to manually connect the jumper cables to the respective input and output connectors.