Package making – With means responsive to a sensed condition – Concurrent control of contents and receptacle feeds
Patent
1989-09-26
1991-04-23
Coan, James F.
Package making
With means responsive to a sensed condition
Concurrent control of contents and receptacle feeds
53251, 53260, 53534, 220512, 220608, 220671, 220DIG15, 206509, 206203, 206427, 206557, B65D 634, B65D 806, B65B 510, B65B 3900
Patent
active
050090534
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
DESCRIPTION
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to storage and transport trays and to a system for packing containers into the trays.
2. Background Art
Beverages, such as soft drinks and beer, are distributed commercially in glass and plastic bottles and in aluminum cans. Single service beverage containers, which typically contain six to twenty-four ounces of the beverage, are grouped into individual cases, each of which contains twenty-four individual containers. These cases may be further subdivided into groups of six, eight or twelve individual beverage container packages. Typically, each case of individual containers or multiple container packages is loaded by an automated tray packing system into a separate tray for transport from the site of a bottling company to the point of sale, such as at a grocery store.
According to prior practice, trays used for transporting beverage containers are made of corrugated paper or wood. Corrugated paper trays are typically rectangular in shape, with upright walls around the perimeter of the tray. Thus, the beverage containers must be loaded vertically into the tray, which is a relatively slow and complex process. Alternatively, if the containers are loaded into the corrugated paper tray when the tray is disposed at an angle relative to the incoming containers, the volume of the tray must be substantially greater than the volume occupied by the containers when the containers are loaded into the tray, thereby resulting in excessive free play or "slop" among the containers in the tray after loading.
Another problem associated with corrugated paper trays is their lack of durability. Such trays are usually discarded after one trip from the bottling company to the point of sale. Because these trays are "non-returnable", the cost of the bottling operation is increased by approximately $0.07 per tray, which can be substantial for a large bottling company shipping millions of beverage cases per year.
Wood trays are typically of older design and are more suitable for transporting bottles than cans. Such wood trays may have individual rectangular compartments within the tray for receiving an individual bottle. Because of the thickness of the wooden partitions between compartments, such wooden trays are typically used only to transport individual bottles and not beverage containers which have been pre-packaged or pre-wrapped into groups of six, eight or twelve individual containers. Because the spacing between individual containers is different when wooden transport trays are used instead of corrugated paper trays, the automatic tray packing system must be adjusted for a different setting, which complicates and slows down the packing process. Although wood transport trays are returnable, they have vertically upright walls, which prevent them from being "nested" together to save storage space.
Automated systems for loading individual beverage containers into respective trays for transportation are known in the art. According to prior practice, such automated systems typically fall into one of the following three categories: (1) tray former loader systems; (2) vertical drop/set packer systems; and (3) ski packer systems. All such systems rely on synchronization between the movement of the individual cans or bottles on a first conveyor track with the movement of the individual trays into which the cans or bottles are to be packed on a second conveyor track.
In tray former loader systems a corrugated paper tray is typically pushed onto the track carrying the beverage containers at right angles with respect to the direction of movement thereof. The leading edge of the tray is folded up to catch the cans on the leading edge and subsequently the side edges and back edge of the tray are folded up to form the container. Tray former loader systems have the advantage of being relatively fast in that they can package approximately 60-80 cases per minute, but have the disadvantage of being relatively complex and costly and the corrugated paper tray is not reusable.
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Kensinger Jesse P.
Langenbeck Keith A.
Coan James F.
Langenbeck Keith A.
McCord W. Kirk
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