Material or article handling – Apparatus for moving intersupporting articles into – within,... – Stack forming apparatus
Patent
1997-07-30
1998-08-25
Young, Karen M.
Material or article handling
Apparatus for moving intersupporting articles into, within,...
Stack forming apparatus
53408, 53529, 4147903, B65G 5716
Patent
active
057977208
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The invention relates to a device for manufacturing a stack of cup-shaped containers inserted one inside another, each with a side wall, on one end of which a base is arranged, and on the other end a flange, wherein the container is composed of a flexible material and the flange is substantially stiffer than the side wall and the base.
Stacks of empty disposable cups are known which are inserted coaxially one inside another and are transported either for filling or to the end-user. These stacks of containers inserted one inside another are either de-stacked at high speed in a filling machine, or removed singly by the end-user, often from a specially constructed container dispenser.
Cup-shaped containers for insertion one inside another and forming a stack had, until now, to keep to certain geometrical configurations and sizes, in particular they had to have conical walls of a generally truncated-conical shape and have a collar and a rigid flange in the wall adjacent to the open end of the container, on the one hand for allowing the containers to be taken hold of and manipulated for stacking, and on the other hand for de-stacking of said containers.
The length and density of the packaging in stacks of known containers fitted one inside another depends inter alia upon the length of the cup-shaped container, upon the thickness of its walls, and upon the cone angle or angle of taper of the side wall of the container. These known containers can be fitted one inside another and combined into a stack only until the conical walls are solidly and tightly folded. In most cases the collar described is necessary for keeping the cup-shaped containers fitted one inside another at a sufficient distance apart from one another and thereby to prevent one container wedging into the next one, causing them to stick together and jam due to friction. By means of a sufficiently large collar, such a stack can be better taken apart and the individual cup-shaped containers can be better de-stacked or better dispensed in a dispenser. It has been shown that the transport and space requirements, as well as the costs, are higher the less dense the stack, the greater the distance from one flange of the container to the other flange of the next container, and thus the greater the spacing of the stack, and the smaller the cone angle of the side wall of the container.
For this reason, it has already been attempted to reduce the distance apart from one another of known containers in a stack, and a limit encountered of a minimum distance apart of the containers from one another amounting to approximately 5% of the total length of the cup-shaped container. This means that a substantial part of the transported volume is air in between the cup-shaped containers in the stack, making a minimum of storage space unavoidable.
Other hollow spaces such as, for example, food or drink cans have a 0 cone angle or have, in other words, a cylindrical side wall, so they are not stackable. During transport and storage of such containers there are therefore additional costs required for the transport of the empty containers as in addition to the material for the containers, a comparatively large amount of weight in transport means per se has to be moved. In order to avoid this, production plants for such cup-shaped containers have been located near to food processing and to filling areas. This represents undesirable secondary conditions, which could be avoided if cup-shaped containers with different geometrical designs could be combined into a stack and separated therefrom.
A further category of hollow containers are foldable or collapsible bags which are manufactured from a plastics material or from paper and are folded flat and are transported in this folded or collapsed form. Such containers again require a complex and expensive apparatus for unfolding and erecting them in a filling machine. Furthermore, they often have creases caused by being laid flat one on top of another and stacking, and by the geometry necessary for transportation as a result of this,
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Morse Gregory A.
Tetra Laval Holdings & Finance S.A.
Young Karen M.
LandOfFree
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