The present invention concerns plastic bags for carrying items, dispensing such bags and a method of creating such bags. More particularly the present invention concerns plastic carry-all bags having a means to permit the bag to be opened easily for product placement, a system for allowing the easy opening of the bag and a method of making such bags.
Plastic bags are excellent for carrying items, including heavy items and items that are bulky or hard to hold. Plastic bags have been used to place purchased items within for many years and throughout this time the one constant has been that the walls of the plastic bag, due to static electricity and surface tension, become affixed together such that opening the bag to place items inside becomes difficult. In some instances, users of the bags have been known to lick their fingers to increase the coefficient of friction so as to better grasp one wall of the bag and break it apart from the other wall. While this can be effective, it is generally unsanitary and can cause numbers of bags to be ruined for use with items such as food. As these bags are often used with food, either in grocery stores, delicatessens and fast food restaurants, licking ones fingers to open a bag is an unacceptable solution.
As plastic bags are becoming universally used in so many locations, the problem of the bag's adjacent surfaces adhering to one another as well as one bag adhering to another is a well-known problem. In addition, bags of the type known as T-shirt bags, having handles and an open neck formed therein, have always had their front panel and rear panel sealed together at the neck where an additional tab of material is provided to attach the bags to a hanging dispenser system. By sealing the front to the back at the top and weakening the material at the neck adjacent to the tab, bags of the prior art are kept in place until they are ripped off of the tab and hanger. The act of opening the bag tends to rip the front panel connection to the tab and, once the bag is filled, the act of using their finger or thumb to separate the front layer from the tab via the weakened area and opening it to be filled or completely removing it from the hanger by the handles rips the back panel neck from the tab. Therefore, the connection between the bag neck and tab in both panels has in the past been of approximately the same strength—a weak connection. However, the connection has been strong enough to cause difficulty in separating the front panel from the rear panel to allow the bag to be filled.
Further, while such a connection permits the ready removal of the bags it creates a situation where a bag may be prematurely ripped from the hanger, due to the general weakness of the connection between the bag and the tab and the strength of the adhesion due to friction (and oftentimes cold welding, as known to persons having skill in the art) of the bags together. The prematurely stripped bags are often, thereby either discarded as difficult to use, or taken with the prior bag accidently and also not used, causing waste.
Attempts and solutions to assuage the myriad of problems associated with plastic bags of this type, specifically making them easy to open and fill without have them be wastefully prematurely ripped from their dispensers, has been unsuccessfully attempted on many occasions. The prior art is replete with attempts at solving these problems. Unfortunately while some of the solutions have provided some relief for the problem none of the solutions has been completely successful.
For example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,877,473, Method of Making a Bag Pack, the ongoing problem of dispensing individual bags is recognized and the solution of using a central “pull tab” is proffered—however, it has been found that the pull tab, which is punched into the bag at the time that other necessary cuts to the bag are made, does not easily separate from the body of the bag thereby defeating the purpose of the tab.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,883,450, Process For Making A Single Side Free Plastic Bag, describes a traditional t-shirt bag and an ungussted bag with a cutout that allows the use of a traditional t-shirt wire dispenser. The patent indicates that the primary object of the invention is to provide a method for forming a thermoplastic bag having an easily separable bag mouth opening by providing one side of the bag relatively free for opening from the other side of the bag. The bag described is a bag with the front layer and back layer of the bag connected, keeping the bag mouth closed, but using a weaker connection in the front to allow, if operable as described, an easier opening front. The process described, however, has been found, in practice, to be not possible by the method disclosed; persons having ordinary skill in the art would not discern the method or device shown in the present invention. Further, while the cited patent is quite old, the long felt need for an easy to open dispensable bag is still felt and has not been resolved by that invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,946,431, Apparatus for the Manufacture of Block-Sealed Side-Gusseted Bags, describes a simple method for making a bag and forming a cut shape in one layer followed by either a burst of air or requiring an additional mechanical means, to fold the cut piece of film in half to cause the cut to protrude from the plane of the layer of film. This protruding folded-back section of film is then sealed, in the bag's production method, in the cut and seal section of the bag producing machine. The method described, however, is not practical and produces questions as to how the cut film would be removed to permit the making of the bag and then provide an ease in opening. Further, the bags of the '431 patent are straight cut at top and offer no solution to a T-shirt bag design as in the present invention—the inclusion of the necessary handles makes the simplistic approach of the '431 patent unavailing. Further, in light of the age of that patent and the remaining need for such a bag, it is clear that persons having ordinary skill in the art could not adopt this teaching to the problems of T-shirt bags.
I have discovered that by removing the front panel's connection of the neck of the bag from the tab portion and strengthening the connection between the rear panel's connections of the neck to the bag, the bag can be opened filled and removed easily and as intended without wasting additional bags due to the failures described above. Further, by providing an element that helps to push the bags forward and up, to the standard bag hanger, the bags of the present invention become easier to use and cause less waste of bags. The method of creating the bags is new and novel and adds very little to the present costs of producing bags that serve the intended purpose as the method can be completed prior to the use of standard bag forming machinery and methods.
There has been a long-felt need for a plastic bag that is easy to open when needed and maintains its integrity and strength and is dispensed without wasting bags. The present invention provides all of this and more as will be explained below.
Objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent as the description proceeds.
In accordance with the present invention, an easy to open plastic bag, a method of dispensing the bags and a method of creating the bags is provided. The bags comprise a front and a rear panel, the rear panel have a strengthened connection to a tab that holds the bags to a dispensing rack and a front panel that is generally un-tethered at the top to a dispensing tab (as are traditional T-shirt bags) and has a notch cut into the front panel of the bag to allow the user to place a finger at the notch and pull the front panel from the rear panel to open the bag without pulling the bag from the rack until separation is desired.
In a preferred embodiment, the bag comprising a front panel having a front and rear wall, the front panel having a left and right edge, a bottom edge and a top area, a rear panel having a front and rear wall, a left and right edge, a bottom edge and a top area. The front and rear panel initially lie adjacent to one another and are joined together at their respective edges to form a bag. The top area of the rear panel is attached to a tab that holds the bag onto a dispensing rack. The front panel is created with a cut-out in the plastic, in the location where it would otherwise be connected to the tab holding the bags to the dispenser, such that the top area of the front wall of the rear panel is accessible therethrough. Because of the cut-out, the top area of the front panel is easily separated from the top area of the rear panel, allowing the easy opening of the bag. In a preferred embodiment, this is done by touching the front wall of the rear panel through the cut out in the front panel and pulling the front panel out by pushing on the rear wall of the front panel adjacent to the cut out.
Additionally, the front panel, in the area of the cut out, can include high coefficient of friction materials or embossing to cause the plastic to be easier to grasp and the bag easier to open. The preferred type of bag using the present invention would be a T-shirt type bag having gussets and handles of types know to those having skill in the art.
In another aspect of the present invention a system for opening one bag at a time of a pack of plastic bags is provided. In the preferred embodiment a dispenser for holding a pack of bags is provided the dispenser includes a tab holder for holding the plastic bags and a curved fitment, adjacent the tab holder, having a surface that extends curvilinearly out from about the tab holder. It will be understood that the fitment could be made angularly, pushing the stack of bag out and up as with the curvilinear fitment, without departing from the novel scope of the present invention. When a pack of bags is attached to the dispenser, by the bag tab, the fitment element of the dispenser causes the top of the pack of bags to be urged outward and upward such that the open front panel of the front-open bag at the front of the pack is urged out to allow the bag to be more easily opened. It will be understood that the curved fitment can be made modularly such that it can be added to existing bag dispensers. In the use of the present invention, preferable the bags are connected together by a header, which can be attached to the dispenser.
The present invention further includes a method of making an easy to open bag feature that can be added as a process in the well known method of making plastic bags. The process includes the steps of providing folded plastic sheeting formed into a V to create a film with a folded edge and a loose edge corresponding to an upper layer of film and lower layer of film and then inserting, via the loose edge side of the film, a punching unit so as to cut a notch into the upper layer of film. The film is then slit sealed to close the loose edge and fed into a convention bag making machine to produce the desired bag with the notch cut into the front later. In one embodiment, a step of folding over the notch and securing the notch to the upper layer of film with a heat seal or cold weld prior to entry into the conventional bag machine is done.
A more detailed explanation of the invention is provided in the following description and claims and is illustrated in the accompanying drawings.
While the present invention is susceptible of embodiment in various forms, there is shown in the drawings a number of presently preferred embodiments that are discussed in greater detail hereafter. It should be understood that the present disclosure is to be considered as an exemplification of the present invention, and is not intended to limit the invention to the specific embodiments illustrated. It should be further understood that the title of this section of this application (“Detailed Description of an Illustrative Embodiment”) relates to a requirement of the United States Patent Office, and should not be found to limit the subject matter disclosed herein.
A. Plastic Bag with Notch Area
Referring now to
The strengthening of the rear tab connection and the removal of the front tab connection is very important to the functioning of the present invention and to a savings of plastic bags. If fewer bags are wasted then the use of plastic bags becomes more ecologically acceptable. It will be understood that the strengthening of the connection between the bag and the tab of a conventional (prior art) bag would not be effective as a means to improve such bags, as the strengthening of both the front and rear tab connections would cause the bag to be more difficult to remove and the strengthening of just one of the connections (either front or back) would provide no improvement to the problem of opening the bag over the prior art.
In creating a bag 10, of the present invention, it will be understood that the preferred material is polyethylene due, among other reasons, to its minimal cost, its strength, and its machine-ability. Polyethylene film can be made in many different forms, each of which is useable for this type of bag. Mono-layer film, which means one extruded layer, in either, a film which is 100% virgin material, a blend of several different polyethylene resins of different densities, or a blended film of virgin polyethylene resins of different densities, which could include post industrial reclaimed material or post consumer material. Each of the films listed can be customized with the appropriate color concentrate to meet application requirements. These films can also be coextruded as multilayer films. The listing of these films is not meant to be a limitation on the present invention. In addition, it will be understood by persons having ordinary skill in the art that any other material having the capability to be cut, sealed and when the bags are created, placed on a header or collated, such as polypropylene, nylon, polyester, laminated films made up of the films listed, can be used without departing from the novel scope of the present invention. Further, the preferred thickness of the material used to create bags of the present invention ranges from 8 microns (0.3 mil) to 25 microns (1 mil) Some considerations for the preferred thickness are the costs compared to other bag types and materials.
As shown in
Referring to
Referring to
Referring again to
It will be understood that while bag 10 remains connect to tab 28 the bag can be more easily filled with products; if bag 10 becomes completely loosened from tab 28 there is an increased likelihood that the bag will not be used and may be discarded due to the difficulty of opening the bag as a result of the adhesion of the front and rear panel together. It is well known that a closed plastic bag requires considerable effort to open.
B. Dispensing Enhancements
In an additional enhancement to the system of opening plastic bags for use, I have further devised an addition to the standard bag dispenser 12, shown in
The use of dispenser 12, and the various components, can be seen in many of the figures herein.
In the use of the fitment 50 bags having the thumb notch area folded back into bag (not removed) can be easily accommodated as well as bags with thumb notched area folded outward to create a tab
C. Method of Manufacture
Referring now to
The film is then slit sealed (a heated blade assembly) to form multiple lanes and to close the loose edge, which forms a small amount of trim which is then discarded and or recycled. Next, the film is post gusseted using a manual type gusseting to form pleats or gussets on each side of the film, known to those skilled in the art.
The film then enters a traditional t-shirt bag machine which has been fitted with an angle seal attachment. The angle seals are applied the film, which then is registered with the sealing, cut off and stacking section of the bag machine and bag is formed to the required length specifications and stack count. The stacked bags are then transferred under a punch press, which is known those skilled in the art, where the top of the bag is die cut to form handles and dispenser means. This punching action also removes the piece of film that is secured to the upper layer of film leaving the loose thumb notch exposed on each bag. The bags in the collated form are then transferred to a packing station where they are placed in a box for shipment. These bags can be formed in a loose stack or a collated stack according to the application requirements.
It will be understood by persons having ordinary skill in the art that the manufacture of the bags can be enhanced using any one or more of these additional methods, without departing from the novel scope of the present invention.
In addition, persons having skill in the art will recognize that the following additions and changes to the method of making bags of the present invention can be utilized without departing from the novel scope of the present invention:
Although an illustrative embodiment of the invention has been shown and described, it is to be understood that various modifications and substitutions may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the novel spirit and scope of the invention.
This application is related to U.S. Provisional Patent Application No. 61/602,800, entitled T-Shirt Bag With Incorporated Thumb Notch, and is incorporated in full in this application as if set forth in its entirety herein.
Number | Date | Country | |
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61602800 | Feb 2012 | US |