An Insulation Spacer Assembly Plug-and-Socket Roof Spacers for Industrial Building Insulation

This patent covers a roofing insulation spacer assembly in which adjacent spacers are joined together by removable plug-and-socket inserts (rather than the integral metal tongues used in earlier products), allowing easier manufacture, more robust transport, and quick field changes to leg heights or insertion lengths.

The Problem

A standard industrial factory roof is built up from purlins, a layer of wire mesh, batts of thermal insulation lying on that mesh, and metal roof sheeting fastened down through everything to the purlins. The fastening process compresses the insulation between the sheeting and the purlins, reducing its R-value at exactly the spots where heat transfer matters most. Roof spacers are inserted between purlin and roof sheet to hold the sheeting clear of the insulation, preserving its thickness and thermal performance, and creating a defined cavity in which the insulation sits. To form long runs across a factory bay, individual spacer sections must be joined together. The applicant’s earlier filings (AU 2020203268 and the parent AU 2023204195) joined spacers using integral sheet-metal tongues and matching slots, formed by laser cutting, turret punching, dies, and press tooling. That process is capital intensive, requires high dimensional accuracy, produces parts that are vulnerable to bending or tearing in transit, and is awkward to modify when a project calls for a non-standard leg height or panel length.

What This Invention Does

The invention provides an insulation spacer assembly that retains the basic top-and-legs spacer geometry but joins adjacent spacers using a removable connection means received in the top or legs. In its preferred form, the connection means is a plug-and-socket arrangement: each spacer end carries either a plug or a socket, and the plug is axially received in the socket so that connected spacers sit in a straight line. The plug includes a single solid metal pin (preferably steel) rather than a folded sheet-metal tongue, eliminating the tearing failure mode of the prior design. The plug may have an enlarged or resilient end with protrusions or balls, and the socket can include a complementary terminus and even a magnet for self-alignment and retention. Because the inserts are separate parts, they can be 3D printed or moulded, swapped for different leg heights, and shipped flat with low transit damage. The application is both a divisional of AU 2023204195 and a patent of addition from AU 2020203268, locking the new connector to the existing spacer family.

Key Features

• Removable plug-and-socket connectors. The connection between spacers is a separate insert that plugs into the spacer body, not an integral tongue. This separates the connector mechanism from the spacer fabrication, simplifying both.
• Solid metal pin construction. The pin within the plug is preferably solid steel, which carries shear and pull-out loads dramatically better than thin sheet-metal tongues that are prone to tearing under roof loading.
• Field-adjustable leg heights and lengths. Because the connectors are removable inserts, the same spacer body can be reconfigured on site for different leg heights or insertion lengths, reducing the number of bespoke parts a contractor must order or stock.
• Magnet-assisted seating. The socket may include a magnet that draws the plug into alignment, helping installers achieve correct seating overhead on roof structures where visibility and access are limited.
• 3D printed or moulded inserts. The connection inserts can be additively manufactured or injection moulded, opening fast-iteration manufacturing options that the laser-and-press process for integral tongues did not allow.

Who Is Behind It?

The applicant and named inventor is Mario Hurst, an Australian individual inventor responsible for the earlier filings in the family. The Australian patent attorney is Spruson and Ferguson in Sydney. The application is filed as both a divisional of AU 2023204195 and a patent of addition from AU 2020203268, which preserves the term and prosecution links to the earlier inventions while protecting the new connector mechanism. There is no corporate applicant in the chain, consistent with a sole inventor commercialising through licensing or his own product business.

Why It Matters

Industrial roofing accounts for a large fraction of conditioned floor area in Australia, including warehouses, food processing plants, cold storage, manufacturing, and large retail buildings. The National Construction Code has progressively tightened minimum R-values for industrial roofs, and Section J energy efficiency provisions specifically penalise compressed or de-rated insulation. Spacer systems that preserve insulation thickness directly affect compliance, energy bills, and air-conditioning load. The shift from a fabricated-tongue connection to a plug-and-socket modular system also lowers the barrier for smaller fabricators to manufacture spacers, since the demanding press tooling is replaced by separately manufactured insert components. Australian patent rights to that modular connector give the inventor a position from which to license the design to roll-formers and roofing accessory manufacturers serving the local commercial and industrial roof market.

Related Concepts

Insulation spacer systems sit at the intersection of cold-formed steel roof framing and building-envelope energy performance. Their value depends on protecting the rated R-value of the insulation batts above the purlins, which is the metric Australia’s National Construction Code uses to set minimum thermal performance for commercial roofs.

The manufacturing shift the patent describes, from press-tooled sheet-metal tongues to swappable inserts, also fits the broader move in construction hardware toward parts that can be 3D printed or injection moulded in short runs and customised per project.

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AU 2026201850 was published in the Australian Official Journal of Patents on 2 April 2026 and is open for public inspection. Patent applications represent inventions that are sought to be protected and do not necessarily reflect commercially available products.