Patent Application
20180127197
This invention provides a simple method of expansion and shipment for expanded slit paper materials for wrapping and void fill for packaging items within a box for shipment. A second inventive step is an improved unpowered expander method for expansion and paper loading.
The expanded slit paper prior art is disclosed in U.S. Pat Nos. 5,538,778, 5,667,871, 5,688,578, and 5,782,735, are incorporated by reference in their entirety, referenced and recited herein as if in full as part of the description of the present invention. The prior art consists of layering a wrapping comprising a combination of a tissue interleave sheet and an expanded slit sheet for the purposes of cushioning fragile items for shipment. The prior art also relates to a method of expanding the slit sheet material using ran electrically powered apparatus.
A main object of the present invention is to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art.
In accordance with a broad embodiment of invention, the use of predominantly virgin paper for the manufacture of expanded slit paper provides a chaotic opening that eliminates the requirement for tissue paper between the expanded slit sheet layers. In accordance with a broad embodiment of the invention, the use of a fold line within the flaps of a packing box is used for shipping the expanded slit paper to block and brace the paper core at each end while blocking and bracing the unexpanded slit sheet paper wound around the paper core that is narrower in width than the paper core. In accordance with a broad embodiment of the invention, an expansion devise for slit sheet expanded materials utilizes pressure mechanism that is removable for easy paper loading for one and two layer systems.
In accordance with a broad embodiment of the invention, an improved unpowered manual expansion device provides a smoother expansion process and easier loading method than prior art systems.
The invention will be described with the accompanying drawings in which:
Where the definition of terms departs from the commonly used meaning of the term, applicant intends to utilize the definitions provided below, unless specifically indicated otherwise.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “rotatable panel” as employed herein, means the part of a corrugated box that rotates at a fold line creating a hinge that provides the top and bottom sides of a corrugated box that folds perpendicular to the sides of the corrugated box on which it is attached.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “rotatable sub-panel” as employed herein, means the part of the container formed from a blank, that is contiguous with the rotatable panel that further folds across a fold line creating a hinge that folds perpendicular to the plane of the rotatable panel.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “sine wave” as employed herein, means a continuous wave across a thin material that forms hills and valleys.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “telescope” as employed herein, means a lateral movement of roll of paper along the axis of the core member, including minimal lateral movement at the region of the roll having the smallest diameter and larger lateral movement at the region of the roll having the largest diameter.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “parcel post” as employed herein, means any method of transportation of products that enables smaller type boxes to be shipped for a fee without the need for a pallet.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “cross members” as employed herein, means the framework that separates and holds in position the yokes.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “yoke” as employed herein, means the portions of the expander that support the roll of slit sheet expandable paper at each end of the paper core.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “paper core” as employed herein, means the round paper tube that the expanded slit sheet paper is wound.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term, “roll holder” means a fixture that applies a force against a core member to modulate the friction applied to the core member and thereby control the resistance to the unrolling of a slit paper wound upon the core member, as required to cause the slit paper to expand during the unwinding process.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “virgin Kraft paper” means paper virgin wood fiber paper manufactured without the use of any recycled paper fibers.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “contiguous” means sharing a common border, including a fold line. Two regions or panels that are not connected to each other are not contiguous. All of the side wall forming panels 110 are separated from each other only by fold lines and thus are contiguous. Similarly, panels 110 are separated from panels 205 only by fold lines and thus are contiguous. In contrast to the term “contiguous”, for the purposes of the present invention, the term “adjacent” means in close proximity to, but not touching. As illustrated in
The new art provides a simpler solution for manufacturing slit sheet expanded material when a single expanded sheet is preferable to use versus the dual cross layered expanded sheets in pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/480,319. The disclosures of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/480,319, filed Sep. 8, 2014, Ser. No. 15/001,168 filed Jan. 19, 2016; Ser. No. 62/571,382, filed Oct. 12, 2017 are incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, and recited herein as if in full as part of the description of the present invention.
Prior to the use of on or around 80% virgin fibers or more, the wedge effect or lack thereof was instrumental in the manufacture of uniformly opened or randomly opened cells. The new art, using Kraft paper having in the range of 80 percent or more virgin fibers, is employed in the production of the slit sheet expandable paper, without the use of modified paper slitting tooling. Thus, the wedge would has little or no effect on the paper. Presently, and explained in Applicant's prior patent applications, such as Ser. Nos. 14/480,319 and 15/001,168, a wedge effect places an emphasis in cell opening direction by which one skilled within the art can orient the tooling to continuously open the cells either forward or backward dependent upon the wedge orientation of forward or rearward of the direction of the manufacturing process. Now, the same tooling, oriented to produce uniformly opening cells in recycled paper can be used for producing randomly, irregularly opening cells with virgin paper without having to alter the tooling. This saves time, labor, and tooling costs that normally would have required separate tooling for each type required.
The term “random” as employed herein with regard to the opening of cells, means that at least twenty (60%) percent and preferably at least eighty (80%) percent of the cell undergo switch backs. Preferably, no more than fifteen (15) adjacent cells have uniform angles of inclination. That is 15 cells going in the cross direction of manufacture and fifteen (15) cells going with the direction of manufacture would make up one block of cells all facing the same direction. Preferable only five (5) cells in either direction are preferable with optimal cell clusters being three by three (3×3). Cells running diagonal can be included in this calculation.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “switch back” means the reversal of the angle of the inclination of the land at some point or points along the length of the sheet of expanded slit sheet material. A reversal of the angle of inclination constitutes a switch back. By way of example, a reversal of the angle of inclination from an inclination of about +60 to about −60 degrees (60 to 120 degrees) constitutes a switch back. Switch back can occur due to extraneous forces other than the wedge effect which causes rows of cells that to reverse themselves, as disclosed in U.S. Ser. No. 14/480,319. In this instance, the creation of chaotic cells is a function of the randomly accumulated long curly fibers that make up a paper sheet such creating switch backs, not in rows or in clumps, but at a cell to cell level.
For the purposes of the present invention, the term “nesting” means the grouping of cells into or onto one another such that an upper slit sheet material cell can fit within the lower slit sheet material cell to the point at which the thickness gain is not substantial. Preferably, the nesting produces a loss of thickness of two adjacent layers of no great than about 15%, and most preferably, the nesting produces a loss of thickness of two adjacent layers of no great than about 10% but, preferably no greater than 20%.
Virgin fibers are long and not straight. During the paper manufacturing process the fibers curl and twist into a variety of fashions as they fall on the screen that enable the fibers to fall onto to being the paper making process. The screen allows the water, used for the vehicle to drive the fibers to the screen. The screen is moving in the direction of the manufacturing process and thus creates a continuous sheet of paper past the filtering process to the drying and flattening process. The fibers dry in a tangled web of multiple and interweaving layers. As the fibers dry the memory of their original shape returns. This memory is static such that, if it is a continuous sheet, the layers of randomly layered fibers keep the sheet flat.
When recycled, paper is cut there is dust created. This dust is as a result of pulverizing the fibers. These fibers are very short are easily removed by/during the die cutting process. Conversely, the long fibers of the virgin paper, being long and resilient, are cut and not pulverized. This creates a lengthening of the paper that can only be accounted for by an accumulation creating a sine wave. This fiber memory creates an undulating or sine wave effect on the paper of about 0.03-0.06″ from the top of the sine to the bottom running transversely to the direction of manufacture or in the direction of the slits within the paper and a smaller sine wave exists every one-quarter inch in the direction of manufacture. The top of the sine wave is every other slit row in a repeating pattern.
These rows of sine wave easily overcome the subtle impression that the wedge effect applies to the paper and subsequently the expansion process is far from uniform as each sine wave turns the paper forward or backward in an even greater chaotic pattern then when using a center bevel tool without that provides no wedge effect.
Prior teachings of making expanded slit paper express a need for the sheet to be flat sheet in order to produce tightly wound rolls. The paper in this instance does not wind up as tightly but, the increased random opening of the cells more than overcomes this shortfall by providing a non-nesting layering that creates a larger diameter roll than the two-layer interlocking system of the prior art.
Packaging the roll of expanded slit sheet material is unlike any system required to ship a wound roll of material. The preferred shipment method is to place the roll in a box exactly sized to optimally fill the space within the box for shipping. The new art requires additional protection for the paper core that extends, in this instance approximately one and half inches from each side of the paper roll. The paper core can be easily damaged as well as the wound unexpanded slit sheet material can telescope easily if the box were to ship in its vertical position or dropped.
The new art solves this problem without any added cost to the packaging by adding a score line to the box flaps, a rotatable panel so that an additional rotatable sub-panel is created that can be folded inward to press against the wound paper as it rubs against the exterior of the paper core. This design is easily done without tooling by the manufacture of corrugated boxes and without additional cost.
The new manual expander art provides the same service as the prior art of non-provisional patent Ser. No. 15/428,144. The disclosures of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/428,144 is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety, as if it were recited in full as part of the description of the present invention. The new art provides several improvements to simply use, shipment, and assembly.
The first improvement enables the expander to be shipped unassembled saving significant Parcel Post freight costs. This is done by using six screws and extruded aluminum cross members connected to the yokes with a screwdriver as can be seen in
The second improvement is with the use of a thinner wood material for the yokes. These are held apart by the cross members. The thinner wood reduces the friction against the paper core and provides an easier expansion with less ripping.
The third improvement is the use of a removable roll holder. This enables the double layer expander to be constructed with one double yoke on each side and not one lower and upper yoke that required separation prior to loading the bottom slit sheet roll. This reduces the labor and the lifting of 20 pounds to just separate the yokes. By removing the roll holder, the roll can be slid into place quickly. The roll holder is connected to the yoke at the back end with a dowel that fits into a guiding hole and is attached by a thumb screw to the yoke.
All references, including publications, patent applications, and patents, cited herein are hereby incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each reference were individually and specifically indicated to be incorporated by reference and were set forth in its entirety herein.
The use of the terms “a” and “an” and “the” and similar references in the context of this disclosure (especially in the context of the following claims) are to be construed to cover both the singular and the plural, unless otherwise indicated herein or clearly contradicted by context. All methods described herein can be performed in any suitable order unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context. The use of any and all examples, or exemplary language (e.g., such as, preferred, preferably) provided herein, is intended merely to further illustrate the content of the disclosure and does not pose a limitation on the scope of the claims. No language in the specification should be construed as indicating any non-claimed element as essential to the practice of the present disclosure.
Multiple embodiments are described herein, including the best mode known to the inventors for practicing the claimed invention. Of these, variations of the disclosed embodiments will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art upon reading the foregoing disclosure. The inventors expect skilled artisans to employ such variations as appropriate (e.g., altering or combining features or embodiments), and the inventors intend for the invention to be practiced otherwise than as specifically described herein.
Accordingly, this invention includes all modifications and equivalents of the subject matter recited in the claims appended hereto as permitted by applicable law. Moreover, any combination of the above described elements in all possible variations thereof is encompassed by the invention unless otherwise indicated herein or otherwise clearly contradicted by context.
The use of individual numerical values are stated as approximations as though the values were preceded by the word “about”, “substantially”, or “approximately.” Similarly, the numerical values in the various ranges specified in this application, unless expressly indicated otherwise, are stated as approximations as though the minimum and maximum values within the stated ranges were both preceded by the word “about”, “substantially”, or “approximately.” In this manner, variations above and below the stated ranges can be used to achieve substantially the same results as values within the ranges. As used herein, the terms “about”, “substantially”, and “approximately” when referring to a numerical value shall have their plain and ordinary meanings to a person of ordinary skill in the art to which the disclosed subject matter is most closely related or the art relevant to the range or element at issue. The amount of broadening from the strict numerical boundary depends upon many factors. For example, some of the factors which may be considered include the criticality of the element and/or the effect a given amount of variation will have on the performance of the claimed subject matter, as well as other considerations known to those of skill in the art. As used herein, the use of differing amounts of significant digits for different numerical values is not meant to limit how the use of the words “about”, “substantially”, or “approximately” will serve to broaden a particular numerical value or range. Thus, as a general matter, “about”, “substantially”, or “approximately” broaden the numerical value. Also, the disclosure of ranges is intended as a continuous range including every value between the minimum and maximum values plus the broadening of the range afforded by the use of the term “about”, “substantially”, or “approximately”. Thus, recitation of ranges of values herein are merely intended to serve as a shorthand method of referring individually to each separate value falling within the range, unless otherwise indicated herein, and each separate value is incorporated into the specification as if it were individually recited herein. To the extent that determining a given amount of variation of some the factors such as the criticality of the slit patterns, paper width differential pre- and post-expansion, paper weights and type, as well as other considerations known to those of skill in the art to which the disclosed subject matter is most closely related or the art relevant to the range or element at issue will have on the performance of the claimed subject matter, is not considered to be within the ability of one of ordinary skill in the art, or is not explicitly stated in the claims, then the terms “about”, “substantially”, and “approximately” should be understood to mean the numerical value, plus or minus 15%.
It is to be understood that any ranges, ratios and ranges of ratios that can be formed by, or derived from, any of the data disclosed herein represent further embodiments of the present disclosure and are included as part of the disclosure as though they were explicitly set forth. This includes ranges that can be formed that do or do not include a finite upper and/or lower boundary. Accordingly, a person of ordinary skill in the art most closely related to a particular range, ratio or range of ratios will appreciate that such values are unambiguously derivable from the data presented herein.
This application claims priority to provisional application 62/425,200 filed Nov. 22, 2016 and is a continuation-in-part of non-provisional patent application Ser. No. 15/428,144 filed Feb. 8, 2017, the disclosures of which are incorporated by reference in their entirety, referenced and recited herein as if in full as part of the description of the present invention.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 62571382 | Oct 2017 | US | |
| 62425200 | Nov 2016 | US |
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parent | 15001168 | Jan 2016 | US |
| Child | 15820514 | US |
