Package making – With means responsive to a sensed condition – Of receptacle or cover feed or adjunct feed or application
Reexamination Certificate
1999-07-08
2001-04-10
Hughes, S. Thomas (Department: 3726)
Package making
With means responsive to a sensed condition
Of receptacle or cover feed or adjunct feed or application
C053S550000, C053S553000, C053S055000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06212853
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a sealing device for a medication packing machine for use in medical institutions such as hospitals and dispensing pharmacies.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
In a typical medication packing machine, each distributed medication is packaged in a heat-fusible packing sheet using a sealing device.
Various sealing devices of the above type for use with tablet medication packing machines have been known. For example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-230832 discloses a sealing device capable of freely changing the size of packing bags. In addition, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 9-202301 discloses a sealing device capable of changing the size of packing bags according to the volume of tablets to be packed.
Such sealing devices, however, have some problems. First, determination of the size of the packing bag based on a calculation result of the volume of a tablet inevitably requires volume data for each tablet. It is therefore difficult to put the foregoing prior art devices to practical use. The reason is that there are various types of medications (e.g., tablet, capsule, powder and so on), each type varying in shape and size. For instance, some medications have the form of an ellipse and other medications have the form of a hexagon. Accordingly, enormous volumes of data are required in determining the size of packing bags. Besides, in the case of packing a plurality of tablets or different kinds of medications in each packing bag, it is required to take dead spaces or the like into consideration. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to find the size of the packing bag by performing arithmetic on the basis of only the volume of each medication. For this reason, it becomes necessary to examine packing results to accumulate knowledge of how to set volume information depending on the medication shape, size, and combination, which is very labor-consuming. In addition, in such a method of determining a packing bag's size, it is impossible to make changes, unless the control program is changed. Accordingly, it is impossible to flexibly deal with differences in the type and quantity of medication to be packaged. Furthermore, since the control program itself is stored in read-only memory (ROM), replacement of the control program becomes necessary.
Additionally, after the packing operation, it is necessary to make sure that the type and quantity of medications packaged in individual packing bags is correct. However, if the packing bags are different in bag length between each medication-taking time (“MORNING”, “MIDDAY”, and “EVENING”), such confirmation of whether the type and quantity of medication packaged is correct or not is difficult to make. In addition, when trying to fold an elongated series of packing bags of different lengths, and to put same into a medication envelop, it is hard to actually fold the series of packing bags because the positions of perforation lines, along which folding can be carried out easily, are not aligned with one another (irregular alignment). This accordingly results in poor workability. If folding is carried out at a wrong position other than a line of perforations, this may cause separation at a wrong position by mistake.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a sealing device for a medication packing machine capable of readily assigning to a packing bag an adequate bag length corresponding to the type and quantity of medication to be compartment-packaged.
The present invention provides, as a solution to the above-described problem with the prior art, a sealing device for a medication packing machine in which an elongated packing sheet is fed in a longitudinally double-folded state and is sealed widthwise at longitudinal space intervals to form packing bags which are identical in bag width but different in bag length, for packing of medication in each of said packing bags, said sealing device comprising:
(a) memory means for storing a bag length setting file and a maximum containable medication quantity setting file,
said bag length setting file containing, for each of said different bag lengths of said packing bags, a maximum medicament quantity ratio which means a ratio of the maximum quantity of standard medication containable in each packing bag with respective bag length to the maximum quantity of standard medication containable in a standard packing bag.
said maximum containable medication quantity setting file containing a maximum quantity of each of other medication containable in said standard bag,
(b) control means for reading a maximum containable medication quantity from said maximum containable medication quantity setting file on the basis of the type and quantity of medication for each medication-taking time in prescription data, calculating a sum of containing rate of the medicament in the standard bag, determining a bag length on the basis of said sum of containing rate and said maximum medicament quantity ratio stored in said bag length setting file, and sealing the medication bag in said bag length and packing said medication in said medication bag.
It is preferred that data contained in each of the files stored in the storage means can be changed by input means.
It is also preferred that the calculated bag lengths, i.e., the results of the calculations, are brought to one unified value equal to the maximum of the calculation results and all packing bags are formed having a bag length corresponding to the maximum value.
REFERENCES:
patent: 4549386 (1985-10-01), Wilson
patent: 4733362 (1988-03-01), Haraguchi
patent: 5524413 (1996-06-01), Fukuda
patent: 5839257 (1998-11-01), Soderstrom et al.
patent: 5945651 (1999-08-01), Chorosinski
patent: 8-230832 (1996-09-01), None
patent: 9-202301 (1997-08-01), None
Yasuoka Keita
Yuyama Hiroyuki
Compton Eric
Hughes S. Thomas
Wenderoth , Lind & Ponack, L.L.P.
Yuyama Mfg. Co. Ltd.
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