Patent Application
20120144777
“Unit load” is a shipping industry term referring to goods or materials stacked on a shipping pallet which can be moved around storage areas, truck load beds etc. by forklift trucks and pallet jacks. Further, the collection of goods on the pallet needs to be packaged (with boxes, stretch wrap, strapping etc.) such that they act as a well bound unit that will stay intact as a unit during the bumps and jolts the unit may encounter in the journey from packing point to destination.
Many unit loads, including the ones relevant here, are formed with stacks of normal box size, sub-units, like wine cases, that can each easily be picked up and moved by able-bodied adults. The sub-units need not be boxed, for example, some plastic bottled water ships on trays and is bound together with shrink-wrap plastic, while canned food is often shipped on cardboard trays with additional wrapping only going over several can-tray layers. These sub-units can be classified based on the load bearing ability of interior products: One type would have the box-size packaging bear the weight load of its contents and the weight of the sub-units stacked above it (for example, boxes containing bags of potato chips); another type uses the products, or their individual packaging, inside the sub-unit for load bearing (for example, the combination of water and water bottle in the trays of bottled water already mentioned); yet other sub-units use both the sub-unitizing packaging and the interior product to jointly carry the weight load of the sub-unit and sub-units stacked above (for example, a case of bananas).
The history of the wine case long predates modern shipping techniques based on forklifts, pallets, unit loads and modern (truck-load size) containerization. Wine cases were being bumped next to travelers trunks on trains well before the spread of modern containerization. The old wine cases had to be tough to protect their wine from the rough transport conditions they endured. Even today, if they are shipped with mixed shipment mail and mail-like delivery services (by, for example, the US Postal Service or the United Parcel Service (UPS)), along with all manner of shapes of packages, through conveyor belt systems, mechanical sorting systems and several hand lifts, a wine case needs to be tough. However, the large majority of wine is now shipped using unit loads and modern shipping techniques that provide controlled and gentle shipping environments for wine.
Beyond the physical functionality of protecting bottled wine and, perhaps, in part due to the old history, wine cases are now used widely in wine marketing. For example, it is common practice in supermarkets to stack wine cases in prominent positions to create feature displays to attract the attention of customers. These featured in-store wine displays (along with those of many other products) are usually topped with open trays, filled with wine-bottles, which have been formed by cutting off the top of an original wine case. The open tray both enhances the display by giving an open view of some of the wine bottles and makes it easy for customers to take a wine bottle for purchase. Although not usually done, it would be possible to maintain visual aspects of the display by just moving needed new stock into the open trays; however, common practice includes cutting down new display cases to form new open trays.
Current life-cycles of corrugated fiberboard (cardboard) wine, spirit and bottled-water cases go as: (i) use as shipping containers from wineries, distilleries and other bottling/packing plants to store locations; (ii) then (often) use for in-store marketing display purposes; (iii) end-of-use and entry into the waste or recycling streams. This one-use life-cycle for corrugated cardboard cases is repeated for many other products and for cases made of materials other than corrugated fiberboard. Typically the corrugated fiberboard cases are in excellent condition up to the moment they are cut-up and/or deformed and sent into the waste or re-cycling streams. Since these cases are expensive (especially those used for display marketing purposes), significant cost reductions will be gained if the number of them paid for is significantly reduced.
One possible approach to improve the expended costs in the current life-cycle is to attempt to return cases in excellent condition back to the packing plants to get more than one use out of them.
Another possible approach is:
The invented method involves the formation of bundles of load bearing product containers and the use of these to form a layer(s) of product in a unit load. The invented method is intended to avoid the use of wine cases and similar boxes in shipping industry unit loads.
The detailed description starts with a lexicon for the remainder of the description and claims.
In these definitions, description and claims, the general style is to take as understood and well defined phrases like “bottle bottom” and that the meaning of such a phrase is the commonly accepted meaning when the referenced bottle is being used normally as designed; even though, pedants might object that “bottle bottom” is ill-defined since, for example, a bottle can be laid on it's side or upside down (relative to it's as-designed, normal orientation) and in these other orientations different parts of the bottle are at it's bottom. In the following, whenever there is a single, under-normal-designed-for-conditions, commonly accepted meaning of an object or object element, then that is the intended meaning for this patent specification and claims.
Many of the details of the method description and claims involve geometrical and space-describing terms. These terms are have been systematically prefaced with the word “substantially;” for example, “substantially elliptical” and “substantially co-linear.” The intention of prefacing with “substantially” is to both avoid use of “elliptical”, “co-linear” etc. in ways that mathematicians would precisely use them but also to use them in the sense that they are practical realizations that intend to and approximate the precise mathematical ideas. So, for example, our “substantially horizontal surface” is an intention toward and practical approximation of a mathematically horizontal surface in the same way a dining table table-top is a practical intention toward and approximation of a horizontal surface and the (substantially) circular plan of a wine bottle on the table-top is a practical intention toward and approximation of a mathematically precise circular plan.
“Unit load” is a shipping industry term referring to goods or materials stacked on a shipping pallet which can be moved around storage areas, packing plant floors, beds of trucks and trains and the floors of large containers used in modern containerized shipping on ships, trucks, trains etc. by forklift trucks and pallet jacks. Further, the collection of goods on the pallet needs to be packaged/wrapped (with boxes, stretch wrap, strapping etc.), such that they (the collection of goods and the pallet) act as a well bound unit that will stay intact as a unit during the bumps and jolts the unit may encounter in a journey from packing point to destination (i.e. where the unit load is meant to be unwrapped/unstrapped to allow access to the packed products).
The process or the result of any standard shipping industry practice(s) that holds products stacked on top of a shipping pallet and the shipping pallet together as a unit load.
Most glass bottles and jars found on supermarket shelves qualify as b-containers and b-containers are the product containers mentioned in the patent abstract. The definition of b-container has three main aspects, form/function, material and strength/breakability.
As to form/function, all b-containers, including most common bottles, have bottoms on which they can stand up-right resting on substantially horizontal table-tops, shelves and storage surfaces and these bottoms allow them to remain stably up-right on these horizontal surfaces for a day and more, if left alone. B-containers have an opening at their tops, for allowing product, they can contain, in and out, and this opening can be closed by an opening sealer(s) including lids, corks, stoppers, plastic membranes or metal foils. During storage and transport, b-container top openings are sealed and closed and the opening sealers are considered integral parts of the b-container they close and seal. B-containers have top plans that are, at their outermost extremities, either substantially circular or substantially elliptical. Further, a b-container's top plan can be projected vertically down to coincide with two horizontal sections through the b-container which (a) have the same shape and size as the top plan periphery and, (b) they (the horizontal sections) are vertically separated from each other by at least one inch. In addition, optional, but common, formal elements of b-containers are applied informational and marketing, thin sheet labels.
As to material, the main bodies (i.e. excluding opening sealer(s) and applied labels) of b-containers are made of crystalline ceramics or amorphous ceramics including: earthenware, stoneware, porcelain, bone china, soda-lime glass (a.k.a. soda-lime-silica glass, common glass or (just) glass), bakeware glass (tempered soda-lime glass) and borosilicate (laboratory-ware) glass and including all variants of these that employ/add coloring agents or thin film coatings for coloring effects and/or surface texture agents for surface texture effects.
As to strength/breakability, b-container main body materials are hard, brittle, strong in compression but weak in tension and shearing. Given this, most containers made from these materials should bear a stable vertical load well and would break into shards when struck against other hard objects. All b-containers must be able to bear a stably applied, vertical load of three or more times their own water-filled weight for a 1 day test period. Further, identical copies (i.e. manufactured with the same materials, specifications and methods) of a b-container must break apart in tests where they are dropped onto a concrete floor capable of supporting warehouse forklift truck traffic, such that, (i) they (the b-container copies) are filled with water, (ii) they are sealed at their top opening, (iii) they first strike the concrete floor at points on their exterior surfaces coincident with vertical projections of their top plan views and (iv) the distance dropped by the centers of gravity of the water-filled, test b-containers between their drop release/start and moments of first strike on the concrete floor is between 3′ and 3′6″. The “b” in b-container alludes to breakable.
undle:
Bundle is sometimes, not here, applied to a group or couple of people held or bound together, probably physically but perhaps emotionally; the thing or device binding them together is usually rather complicated.
Bundle is more often applied to a group of inanimate objects held together. The holding together is sometimes done by gravity as well as a floor or ground and perhaps a wall or walls; in such use bundle is synonymous with pile or stack. However, more common than the pile sense of bundle, is a meaning in which the grouped objects are held together by a binding device, such as a rope, strap or cloth sheet, which is used to hold the group of objects together in close proximity and which, most commonly, can be picked up together as a unit and easily moved or transported.
Bundle is used here in a restricted version of the last sense. That is, here, bundles are groups of two or more b-containers held together in close proximity by binding devices (see definition just below) which can be picked up easily as units by an able bodied adult for movement of the bundles on and off shipping pallets, hand trucks and dollies. Further, the parts of these bundles must be arranged so that the bundle can be placed with bottoms of the bundle's b-containers resting on a substantially horizontal surface and so remain, unmoving, for a day or more, if left alone.
When operating to bind, binding devices are closed loops for binding groups of two or more b-containers together into bundles. When not operating to bind, binding devices may or may not be closed loops.
A binding device may be made from a flexible linear strip, sheet, belt or rope with ends that can pointed to overlap back on and be fixed to each other to form a closed loop that can form a bundle with a group of b-containers, for example: knotted rope, twine, textile strips or sheets; leather and other buckled belts; textile sheets/strips with edges sewn together to form loops/tubes; self adhesive tapes (for example paper backed, plastic backed tapes and filament reinforced variations of these); metal foils, paper or plastic sheets or tapes, with spot applied adhesive; plastic sheets, tapes or ropes with spot applied welds (for example, hot gas, speed tip, contact, hot plate, hot knife, high frequency, ultrasonic, friction, laser and solvent welds); also, metal straps or sheets with spot applied welds (for example, energy beam or ultrasonic welds), seal and notch joints, seal and crimp joints or seal-less, interlocking key methods.
A binding device may also be made from an innately closed loop which can form a bundle with a group of b-containers. These innately closed loops can be formed using sheet cutting techniques (as in die-cast cutting to form gaskets), knitting techniques, perhaps also by complicated loom weaving techniques. Economical and useful innately closed loops can get manufactured from materials that can be molded as well as those that can be extruded into tubes followed by lateral tube slicing/cutting to form loops. Examples of these materials are plastics, especially thermoplastics, rubber (natural and synthetic, also both mixed with latex, and both vulcanized to various degrees) and metals and alloys. The ability to form these materials through extrusion, slicing and molding techniques, along with the wide range of Young's (axial elastic) modulus values achievable in this group of materials, allows great flexibility for finding economic solutions to making closed loops that can form bundles of common b-containers found in supermarkets. For example, low density polypropylene (LDPE), commonly used in the plastic yokes made to hold six packs of soda cans together, is likely to be both functionally sufficient and economically competitive for making closed loops that can make binding devices that satisfy their functional definition. Among the thermoplastics there are many other materials sufficient for making closed loop binding devices of bundles and at price points similar to LDPE, for example, HDPE (high density polypropylene), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), (unexpanded) polystyrene. There are many other capable thermoplastics, although some of these may be more expensive.
A binding device may also be made from several pieces: Reusable binding devices could be made from multiple sections of pre-shaped and relatively stiff thermoplastics such that the multiple sections join together to form a closed loop capable of binding bundles of b-containers. The joins could be made with tongue and slot joints, slip-key joints or nob and clip couplings.
Capable stiff thermoplastics include stiff polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polycarbonate. Although more expensive than polypropylene for one use, reuse might make these solutions price competitive.
Note, important extensive elastic properties for functional binding can easily be adjusted by (a) varying the cross-sectional area of closed loops (easy to do with molding/extrusion loop forming methods) and/or (b) varying the number of closed loop binding devices used for a bundle; using two, widely spaced binding thin loops is likely to be a good solution for a wine bottle bundle.
Glass containers can quite easily break if they are allowed to jostle and jolt with neighbor glass containers. Current practice in shipping is to place glass containers into cardboard partition spaces; this reduces container breakage to acceptable levels by: (a) restricting the amount of space the glass containers can move around in, which consequently restricts the speeds they can attain before impacting a neighbor which, consequently, reduces the impact energies to levels well below those likely to cause breakage in most instances; (b) impact cushioning (impact energy absorption) by the partitioning cardboard that further reduces container impact energies.
The preferred embodiments of the invention primarily work by restricting relative movement between b-containers in bundles even further than current fiberboard/cardboard partition methods with consequent lowering of (uncushioned) impact energies relative to current partition methods—this is the key physics as to why this bundle shipping method can work for breakable b-containers.
In the preferred embodiments all the b-containers in any given bundle have the same shape and size (i.e. manufactured with the same shape and size specifications) as all the other b-containers within that bundle.
The detailed description will focus on preferred embodiments with seven b-containers bound in each bundle such that each bundle's top-plan is closely related to a hexagon, see
With the same shape and size condition, the points of contact between any two b-containers in a bundle will lie on points on their exterior surfaces coincident with a vertical projection of the b-containers' top plan views: For example, see top plan view
Two b-containers can have more than 1 point of contact between them when these points of contact are arranged substantially vertically above and below each other: For example, points of contact 143 and 1143 between containers 103 and 107 in vertical section
Like,
In a bundle, the binding device 11 (
Hexbinds should substantially conform to several geometric conditions, stated in the following . . .
Hexbinds with b-containers with substantially circular plans (like 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106 and 107 in
The possible shapes/arrangements of a bundle's top plan are limited, to some extent, by the shape of the individual b-containers and the number of b-containers in the bundle; while the practical requirement that the bundle remains as a unit during packing plant, warehouse and store stockroom manipulations (like movement on and off pallets, hand trucks and dollies) further limits the number of practical bundle top plans. For bundles of between two and twelve b-containers,
Since hexbind plans are closely surrounded by symmetrical hexagons with many repeated features, it is easy to make a horizontal plan arrangement of many hexbinds such that the collection of hexbinds is closely packed and, hence, efficiently packed for shipping purposes. For arranging many hexbinds, illustrated in
To formalize the preferred embodiment horizontal arrangement of many hexbinds, referring to hexbinds 10, 12, 14 and 16 in
In
In one simple embodiment, the substantially horizontal surface 21, illustrated in
Many other plan arrangements of many b-container bundles are possible within the invented method, which differ from that illustrated in
The plan arrangement shown in
Another preferred embodiment product layer plan arrangement of bundles is shown in
The maximization of the number of b-containers, with the given restrictions/considerations, leads to one hundred and seventy-five b-containers in the hexbind layer arrangement of
Although maximization of the number of b-containers in layers of product is likely to be attractive for commercial reductions to practice, this maximization condition is not a necessary part of the invented method.
A layer of product of bundles of b-containers does not have to fill out the entire area of a pallet. So, for example, in
The invention is a method of combination. It takes advantage of the smooth shipping environment in unit loads in modern shipping based on forklifts, pallet jack and unit load; i.e. an environment where b-containers are kept at, or very near to, their as-designed-for vertical orientation at all times (except for catastrophic events, like accidental truck roll-overs, where shipping insurance would cover breakage and loss). The method uses easily breakable b-product containers made of amorphous and crystalline ceramics, like pottery and ordinary glass, for shipping product; with a b-container packing technique with no or minimal horizontal, inter-b-container cushioning (labels on b-containers afford a small amount of cushioning relative to bear ceramic) and which minimizes horizontal, inter-b-container impact energies with hard to notice restrictions of space. This combination's lack of required horizontal cushioning is combined with the use of the vertical load-bearing abilities of the product b-containers to enhance the efficient (lack) of use of vertically orientated packing materials.
The containers for which this packaging/shipping method is intended, such as whiskey and wine bottles or jars of lotion, are currently shipped with packaging that uses a great deal of fiberboard cardboard and similar materials which are expensive. This expense is in large part due to the amount of energy required to transport and process the raw and re-cycled materials from which this packaging is made into their functioning ready-to-package state.
