Bendable Curtain Rail

The client is a manufacturer of curtain poles and tracks. They had identified a potential gap in the market for a corded curtain track that could be manually bent on site to suit bay windows and awkward corners of a room. Existing products need to be bent off site and delivered pre-formed. This requires the installer to first visit the site to measure the fitting and the resultant track can often exceed the size of a delivery van. All of which incurs extra cost and delays.

The novel solution to this problem involved joining two identical sections of aluminium track using an articulating moulded spacer, which was made of sections that acted like the vertebrae of a spine. The spacer holds the two sections of track at the correct distance apart and allows the three components to move independently of each other during bending to prevent distortion. Other components including curtain runners, end caps, joiners and pulleys were incorporated to form an integrated corded curtain track product. 

Many of the parts were prototyped using Hillside Product Design's in-house 3D printers. Hillside Product Design maintained a close liaison with the manufacturing partners during development through to full production. The product has undergone extensive testing and was issued to selected customers of the client for approval trials before launch. 

The intellectual property is fully protected and the client commissioned Hillside Design to prepare all the necessary drawings to incorporate into the patent documents.