Special receptacle or package – Shrink film package
Reexamination Certificate
1999-05-19
2001-04-17
Gehman, Bryon P. (Department: 3728)
Special receptacle or package
Shrink film package
C053S442000, C229S164200
Reexamination Certificate
active
06216871
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to a pack of the type comprising a cardboard box provided with a shrinkable film which is integral with it, said pack being intended for the packaging of articles intended to be delivered in highly variable numbers or volumes.
It also relates to a method and an apparatus for forming a packaging pack of the type comprising a cardboard box provided with a shrinkable film It has a particularly important, though not exclusive use in the field of the transport of heavy objects, that is to say of a weight greater than one kilogram, for example three kg, five kg, ten or even thirty kg, and of irregular shape.
Such packaging is also particularly suitable for objects, such as boxes, bottles, drugs or else various documents, taken as a group or unit by unit in the same pack which is particularly intended for delivery to a retailer, such as a book seller or pharmacist and, more generally, the retail trade.
It will easily be understood that wholesalers, in order to prepare the orders from their retailers, need to package batches of inherently widely differing articles in packs which must, nonetheless, withstand sometimes difficult transport and delivery conditions; in view of the cost of standard boxes, it quickly became difficult to use such packs for packaging batches of articles of this kind, since this would presuppose resorting systematically to ranges of packs, the storage of which would be extremely costly and therefore unsuitable for this form of distribution.
Many solutions to this type of problem are already known, and, for a long time, these have proposed packaging the batches of articles inside a box or tray, especially made of cardboard, which is covered with a heat-shrinkable plastic sheet connected to the inner face of the bottom of the box and/or to the inner face of the two opposite vertical walls; it is thus sufficient for the objects to be packaged to be arranged inside a cardboard bottom, and for them subsequently to be covered with the plastic sheet which, finally, will be shrunk completely onto the products, for example as a result of passage through a heating tunnel, the result of this being that said products are kept firmly stowed against the transport box. Such solutions are normally highly advantageous, since they require only a single box with a minimum volume of cardboard, thus bringing about substantial savings in terms of material, in addition to obvious savings in the storage of now only a single pack.
French patent FR-2,426,620 is known in this connection, according to which two plastic sheets are used for packaging a batch of products, said sheets overlapping one another, at one of their ends, on top of the Load, so as to be hot-welded to the latter in the region of the overlap zone, their other end, which is not in contact with the load, being adhesively bonded to the inner face of the bottom or, in the vicinity of the bottom, to the inner face of a side wall of a cardboard box obtained from a simple blank forming the bottom of the box, from which bottom extend two lateral faces which are previously folded down onto the load, before the two plastic sheets, which will retain the assembly as a whole by welding, are folded down. This particular pack has the disadvantage of a serious lack of mechanical stability of the assembly as a whole; in fact, the entire packaging is linked to the detachment or tear resistance of the connections of the plastic sheets to the bottom or side walls of the cardboard box. It is well known that such packs are subjected to high stresses during handling and transport, these often leading to the breakage of the connections of the plastic films to the cardboard base.
Other solutions have been proposed in this respect, these being based, this time, on the surprising discovery that the detachment or tear resistance of the sheetlike heat-shrinkable materials during the handling and/or transport operations was improved when the connection of said heat-shrinkable materials to the box was made outside said box on at least one outer face (bottom or side wall) of the latter, that edge of said face which is covered with said sheetlike heat-shrinkable material acting as a means for opposing the stresses exerted by the weight of the Load.
Several solutions have already been proposed in this regard, especially in French patent FR-A-86,01435, which describes a packaging box consisting of a case, for example made from cardboard, and of a sheetlike heat-shrinkable material for packaging a load and for keeping the latter in place, characterized in that the sheetlike heat-shrinkable material is connected by means of at least one of its borders to the outer surface of a wall of the case in the vicinity of the edge of said wall and is deployed, on the outside, from said border toward the edge of said wall and then, on the Inside of the easer opposite the inner surface of said wall, at the same time moving away from the latter toward the load to be packaged. A similar solution is found, moreover, in French patent FR-A-85,16217, according to which the heat-shrinkable sheets are inserted between the inner faces of the walls and portions of these same walls, said portions being folded toward the interior of the box.
These last solutions have the disadvantage either of requiring a cover, in the first case, or of providing, at the outset, a special cut-out which is costly In terms of material and generates extra cost in the management of stocks of such packs; furthermore, these solutions are more complicated in mechanical terms, in as much as they require two plastic sheets which appreciably complicate the assembly operations. Another solution was proposed in French patent FR-2,577,001, which describes an American or joined-together American boxes which are closed by means of an independent adhesively bonded lid.
A method for the packaging of batches of products of various volumes is also known (FR-A-2,661,392), in which a wedge is pushed into a box, at the same time driving a plastic film. The film is arranged and projects transversely on either side of the wedge, which is less wide than the inner dimension to the box in the transverse direction and which comprises longitudinally, on its two opposite sides, two elastic wings or flaps locked by a spring effect, via locking tongues, in complementary orifices in the walls of the previously formed box.
Such a method does not make it possible to obtain a pack capable of holding objects of great weight.
A packaging box for small parts of any shape is also known (DE 81,15,943), said box being provided with a sleeve or bag made of heat-shrinkable plastic and with one or more superposed pallets which are introduced with an appropriate fit into the sleeve and box.
Here, too, such a pack has disadvantages. Its production cannot be mechanized, especially in view of the difficulty of introducing the pallet into the sleeve or bag, and it is appropriate only for small objects (for example, screws).
The documents DE-U-8115943 and FR-A-2,661,392 describe packs with a board and plastic film which can hold only small objects and/or do not sufficiently withstand difficult transport conditions.
Advantageously, the rigid board is a plane board when it is flat and devoid of flaps, that is to say the transverse and longitudinal lateral peripheral portions of which are not connected to the central part of the board by means of folding or grooving lines, for example in order to form wings which are deformed elastically during introduction into the box.
In other words, the board has a transverse dimension equal to or greater than the inner transverse dimensions of the box, that is to say the distance separating the transverse edges which are in contact and round which the plastic film passes is at least equal to the inner transverse dimensions of the box.
By inner transverse dimensions of the box is meant the shortest distance separating the inner faces of two opposite walls in the transverse direction.
It will easily be understood that such a solution has many advantages, as compared with all the pr
Bacques Jean-Yves
Coalier Guy
Serre Jean-Claude
Gehman Bryon P.
Merchant & Gould P.C.
Otor
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