Fluid sprinkling – spraying – and diffusing – Fountains or drinking tubes and straws – Drinking
Patent
1996-04-03
1998-10-13
Weldon, Kevin
Fluid sprinkling, spraying, and diffusing
Fountains or drinking tubes and straws
Drinking
A47G 2118
Patent
active
058200231
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a drinking straw and more particularly to a drinking straw for packaging containers, the drinking straw comprising two tubular sections with interconnecting end portions.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Packaging containers in portion size for, for example, juice or other beverages intended to be consumed directly from the packaging container are becoming steadily more common. Packaging containers of this type are normally manufactured by fold formation and heat sealing of a paper/plastic laminate into a substantially parallelepipedic configuration. The packaging material is provided at the upper side of the packaging container with a weakened region which serves as an opening arrangement. In order to facilitate consumption of the contents of the package, the package is often provided with a drinking straw which is placed in a protective plastic envelope which, in turn, is connected to the outside of the packaging container with the aid of so-called hot-melt application. Using one end of the drinking straw (which is normally spiculated at an oblique angle), the weakened region of the packaging container wall may readily be punctured and penetrated so that the drinking straw may be pushed down into the packaging container and then used when the contents of the package are consumed.
Since it is not desirable that the drinking straw applied to the packaging container projects out, in the mounted state, beyond the outer contours of the parallelepipedic container, the technically feasible length of the drinking straw is automatically limited so that, when in use, only a short portion of the straw projects out from the packaging container. In order to obviate this drawback, a plurality of drinking straw designs and constructions have been proposed in the art. These include drinking straws provided with a bellows construction, and secured in the folded state on the packaging container, and telescopic drinking straws in which the sections thereof may be retracted into one another so that the length of the drinking straw in the inactive position may be reduced, and finally twin section drinking straws which are assembled together by the consumer before being pushed down into the packaging container. Both the bellows-fitted and the telescopic drinking straw types suffer from a certain instability which may be perceived as a disadvantage. This instability is wholly absent in the twin section drinking straw which may be assembled together by the consumer. For addition, in a given total length, this twin section drinking straw will be shorter than the other two types in the inactive (i.e. in the non-assembled) state.
Prior art drinking straws of the twin section type have consisted of two tubular sections of different diameters, i.e. the one tubular section has an inner diameter which substantially corresponds to the outer diameter of the other tubular section. On assembly of the drinking straw, its parts may be simply connected to one another, but the risk then arises that the parts are telescoped into one another, which, of course is undesirable. The principal drawback inherent in this prior art type of twin section drinking straw is, however, that the use of two tube types of different diameters considerably increases the costs involved for the drinking straw. This is associated not only with the fact that two different tube diameters must be manufactured, but also that the handling of two different diameters requires adaptation of the machinery and methods employed.
OBJECTS OF THE INVENTION
One object of the present invention is to devise a drinking straw for packaging containers, the drinking straw comprising two tubular sections which do not display the above-outlined drawbacks.
A further object of the present invention is to devise a drinking straw for packaging containers consisting of two tubular sections of the same diameter.
Yet a further object of the present invention is to devise a drinking straw of the above-mentioned type which is economical to
REFERENCES:
patent: 145641 (1873-12-01), Fritsch
patent: 695066 (1902-03-01), MacClain
patent: 942306 (1909-12-01), Clarke
patent: 3106312 (1963-10-01), Hitchcock
patent: 3189171 (1965-06-01), Miller
patent: 4850533 (1989-07-01), Hoshi et al.
patent: 5265757 (1993-11-01), Wu
Tetra Laval Holdings & Finance S.A.
Weldon Kevin
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