Manufacturing container or tube from paper; or other manufacturi – With cutting – breaking – tearing – or abrading – Including application of heat
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-14
2001-07-03
Vo, Peter (Department: 3721)
Manufacturing container or tube from paper; or other manufacturi
With cutting, breaking, tearing, or abrading
Including application of heat
C493S194000, C493S203000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06254521
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for the manufacture of plastic storage containers and particularly folded flat plastic bags with an integrated formed standup bottom wall structure to provide a stand up plastic bag.
Common plastic bags are widely used in the packaging of products at the point of sale. The weight of the plastic and the construction will vary somewhat with the particular application, and particularly dependent upon the required strength of the bag. Such bags are used as an alternative to paper bags which are also folded members and specially formed with a bottom structure which, when the bag is opened, permits the direct standing of the paper bag to receive the product.
Plastic bags which will stand have not generally been available, particularly at a competitive cost. The assignee of this application is an owner of various pending patent applications disclosing a plastic bag construction which permits a folded flat plastic bag to be opened and with a substantially flat bottom wall permitting direct standup of the plastic bag. This latter bag has distinct advantages over the prior plastic bags which require the user to spend time to open the plastic bag and furthermore to place a product in the bag in order to even begin to provide a standup plastic bag construction.
As set forth in the following series of copending patent applications which included provisional applications and subsequent application and disclose various prior art and background information for this application.
Filing
Ser. No.
Date
Inventor
Title
1.
60/088,613
06-09-98
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Film Hinging
09/257,345
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Film Hinging
Precreasing Process
2.
60/088,612
06-09-98
Robert DeMatteis
Cold Sealing of Plastic
Donald Pansier
Film
09/257,848
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Apparatus and Process
for Cold Seal in
Plastic Bags
3.
60/089,582
06-17-98
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Bag Bundling
System
09/258,010
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Bag Bundling
(now U.S.
System
Pat. No.
6,171,226
4.
60/089,583
06-17-90
Donald Pansier
Automatic Ventilating
Robert DeMatteis
System For Intake
Bags
09/258,033
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Automatic Ventilating
System For Intake
Bags
5.
60/092,232
07-09-98
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Bag
Donald Pansier
Manufacturing Process
09/257,843
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Bag
Donald Pansier
Manufacturing Process
6.
60/092,233
07-09-98
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Film
Donald Pansier
Rigidity Means
09/258,015
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Plastic Film
Donald Pansier
Rigidity Means
7.
09/257,361
02-25-99
Robert DeMatteis
Flat Bottom Plastic
(now U.S.
Bag
Pat. No.
6,095,687
The applications when referenced herein are identified by the above numbers.
The above applications disclose various plastic bag structures, including one prior art patent disclosure of such bag with a flat bottom wall. Generally, the prior art plastic bag is considered complex to manufacture and still cumbersome in use.
The above referenced applications further disclose forming of a new plastic bag with a flat bottom wall by providing a hinge line pattern within the bag sides adjacent the bottom wall portion of a flat gusseted tubular plastic member. The unique bags which are disclosed in the above applications are generally formed with a top opening having a handle structure permitting the support of a stack of the bags for easy access and top opening. The bag may be opened rather easily by various methods. Thus, the one side of the bag opening may be grasped at the top and the bag snapped to provide the opening of the bag and the forming of the flat bottom wall. Merely reaching into the bag may also be applied to create the lay flat bottom wall condition.
Bag making machines are available for high speed production of the prior art plastic bags usually from flat folded or tubular plastic stock available in large rolls. The plastic stock is removed in its flat form and passed through the bag machine where it is cut and sealed to define a flat, open ended bag. The bags are normally formed in stacks and suitably packaged for marketing. The top opening may be shaped with a handle configuration with bags assembled in a stack. The stack may be joined along the upper edge or portion holding the stack together for subsequent handling. The stack may be supported on a hanger from which the merchant or purchaser can readily remove the outermost bag for inserting of product or products. As noted above, the prior art plastic bag which forms a relatively flat bottom wall has presented significant difficulty, and resulted in a relatively high cost bag.
The bag structure as disclosed in the copending application(s) provide a construction, which the present inventors recognized, is adapted to modification of the technology of known bag making processes. Existing modern high speed bag making machinery and technology provides a flat bag stock in tubular form and preferably of a width equal to the width of a plurality of bags. In the latter system, a wide web stock is severed and sealed along the length of the web stock to develop separate tubular bag lanes or lines which are then processed by appropriate sealing of the cut side edges to form individual tubular stock.
Other systems use a folded web with an open edge to form the opening to the bags and with the sides formed by side seams in the folded web.
The new design of the plastic bag with the hinged bottom wall structure requires special adaptation of the bag making technology to maintain a desired high speed and thereby low cost production of the new design. The hinge portion of the specially formed square bottom walls require accurate formation of a hinge within the folded web stock for forming of the bag and preferably with essentially minute seal lines in the bottom wall structure, and preferably sufficient to avoid interference with or requiring special handling to open the bag with the bottom formed as a direct flat supporting wall.
SUMMARY OF THE PRESENT INVENTION
The present invention discloses a process and machine including modern technology to process a layered plastic web into a bag with the appropriate hinge structure to allow the subsequent convenient opening of the bag with the desired flat bottom wall. Generally, in accordance with the present invention, a tubular or folded stock is passed through a series of stations to form the necessary seals, preferably without significant internal/external projections of web material, thereby maintaining a substantially continuous planar plastic side and bottom wall structure upon the opening of the bag, within which the hinge pattern is formed, particularly in the bottom wall structure.
Generally, in accordance with a preferred construction of the present invention, the bag machine is generally constructed in accordance with bag forming machines heretofore manufactured and sold by the assignee. The machine has a web supply section including a support for a tubular plastic stock roll, such as a flattened tube stock having a width corresponding to one or to a plurality of bag widths. In the latter, a cut and seal unit generates thin edge seals to maintain the essentially continuous plastic film at the opposite side edges of the cut width, and form individual lines or lanes for a plurality of bag orientation. The individual tubular web stock in each lane is then side gusseted along the sides. The gusseted individual webs are then moved inwardly to reduce the overall width of the bag making machinery downstream from the gusseted individual lines and passed into a bag forming section within which the webs of each lane move through a series of bag forming stations in cyclical sequence.
In a preferred construction, a seal and cut unit divides the web in each lane into like bag segments, preferably into dual bag segments, with the opposite ends of each segment forming a bag bottom and the center forming the area within which the open ends of the bags are made. The bag segments are then processed to form stacks of bags from each segment.
In a preferre
Blaser Giles R.
Claybaker Peter J.
DeMatteis Robert
Ireton Michael P.
Konitzer Troy D.
Amplas, Inc.
Andrus Sceales, Starke & Sawall
Paradiso John
Vo Peter
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