WO1998036980A1

WO1998036980A1 - Box and blank for packaging an article or group of articles in an indeterminate volume

Info

Publication number: WO1998036980A1
Application number: PCT/FR1998/000319
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jean-Yves Bacques; Guy Coalier; Gérard Mathieu
Original assignee: Otor
Priority date: 1997-02-20
Filing date: 1998-02-19
Publication date: 1998-08-27
Also published as: AU6405998A; EP1007418A1; FR2759672B1; FR2759672A1

Abstract

The invention concerns a packaging box or blank of cardboard or the like for transporting a load, comprising a lateral can-band carton (32) consisting of at least four vertical walls and a horizontal bottom (33) made integral with said can-band carton via first folding lines (9), and two heat shrinkable plastic film sheets (16) for packaging and maintaining the load. The box comprises two double opposite flaps (10), forming at least partly the bottom of the box, each double flap respectively enclosing one end of the thermoplastic sheet to which it is bonded.

Description

BOX AND BLANK FOR THE PACKAGING OF AN ARTICLE OR A LOT OF ITEMS OF INDETERMINARY VOLUME

The present invention relates to a cardboard or similar packaging case for transporting a load, comprising a lateral belt formed by at least four vertical walls and a horizontal bottom secured to the belt via first fold lines, and two sheets of heat shrinkable plastic film for packaging and holding the load in place.

It also relates to a blank for the formation of a packaging box provided with two sheets of shrink film.

It finds a particularly important although not exclusive application in the field of the transport of heavy objects, that is to say of weight greater than one kilogram, for example greater than three or five kilograms, for example 12 kilograms, and of shape irregular.

Such conditioning is. particularly suitable for objects such as boxes, vials, medicines or various documents, taken in groups or individually in the same packaging, for example intended for the delivery of a retail merchant such as a bookseller or a pharmacist.

We understand that wholesalers, to prepare the order for their retailers, need to packaging lots of very different articles by nature in packaging which must nevertheless withstand sometimes difficult transport and delivery conditions; taking into account the cost of standard boxes, it quickly became difficult to use such packaging for packaging batches of articles of this nature, as this would imply systematically using ranges of packaging whose storage would be costly and consequently unsuitable for this form of distribution.

Solutions are already known which consist in packaging batches of articles inside a box or a container, in particular of cardboard, covered by a sheet of heat-shrinkable plastic linked to the internal face of the bottom of the box and / or to the internal face of the two opposite vertical walls; in this way, it suffices to place the objects to be packaged inside a cardboard bottom, then cover them with the plastic sheet which will finally be completely shrunk on the products by passing through a heating tunnel for example , with the consequence of keeping said products securely stowed at the transport crate. Such solutions require only a single box with a minimum volume of cardboard, providing savings in materials in addition to obvious savings in packaging storage which has become unique. In this sense we know the French patent FR-A-2,426,620 according to which we use to package a batch of products, two plastic sheets which overlap by one of their ends above the load in order to be heat welded at the overlap zone, the other of their ends which is not in contact with the load being glued near the bottom on the internal face of a side wall of a cardboard box obtained from a blank forming the bottom of the box. This particular packaging suffers from a defect in the mechanical strength of the assembly; indeed, all the packaging is linked to the resistance to take-off or tearing of the connections of the plastic sheets with the bottom or the side walls of the cardboard box.

It is well known that such packages are subjected to high stresses during handling and transport frequently leading to the rupture of the plastic film connections with the cardboard base.

In this regard, other solutions have been proposed, this time based on the observation that the resistance to take-off or tearing of the heat-shrinkable sheet materials during handling and / or transport operations was improved when the connection of said heat-shrinkable materials to the body was carried out outside of said body on at least one external face thereof.

In this sense, several solutions have been proposed, in particular in French patent FR-A-2,593,781 describing a packaging case consisting of a case, for example made of cardboard and of a heat-shrinkable sheet material for packaging. and keeping a load in place.

The heat-shrinkable sheet material is bonded by at least one of its edges to the external surface of a wall of the case in the vicinity of the edge laditee said wall, and is developed outside from the edge towards the edge of said wall then inside the case opposite the internal surface of said wall while moving away from the latter towards the load to be packaged.

The latter solutions notably have the drawback of originally requiring a special cutting which is costly in material and generates an additional cost in managing the stock of such packaging; in addition, these solutions are mechanically more complicated.

The present invention aims to provide a box and a blank better than those previously known to the requirements of practice, in particular in that it allows automatic manufacture of packaging, while guaranteeing excellent fixing of the films on the cardboard box. With the invention, the resistance to tearing or shearing of the connections between plastic sheet and internal wall is improved, which ^' avoids separation between products and body when the latter is subjected to shocks, falls or overturning. especially during handling.

To this end, the invention proposes in particular a corrugated cardboard box or the like for transporting a load, said box comprising a lateral belt formed by at least four vertical walls and a horizontal bottom secured to said belt via first fold lines, and two sheets of a heat-shrinkable plastic film material intended for the packaging and holding in place of said load, characterized in that it comprises two opposite double flaps forming at least partially the bottom of said box, each double flap being on the one hand connected to the adjacent wall by one of said first fold lines and having on the other hand a free end edge substantially in contact with said first fold line, each double flap enclosing a end of a respective thermoplastic sheet with which it is bonded, said sheets escaping respectively from said free end edges s substantially in contact with said first fold line to extend from said edges over a length sufficient to cover each other by completely enveloping the load and block said load by thermal shrinkage of the film against the bottom.

Advantageously, when the cardboard is a corrugated cardboard, the direction of the grooves is perpendicular to the first fold lines in contact with the thermoplastic sheets.

In advantageous embodiments, use is also made of one and / or the other of the following arrangements: each double flap comprises a first flap connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line and a second flap , covering said first flap and connected audi ^~ first flap by a double fold line; each double flap is constituted by a first flap connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line and by a second flap entirely covering said first flap with which it is only secured by gluing; the second flap has on its edge substantially in contact with the first fold line, at least one post, said post collaborating with a corresponding recess made at said first fold line, to provide

1 snap of the second flap once the latter in place on the first adjacent flap corresponding. a groove of height at least equal to the thickness of said second flap and extending: over a part of the length of said junction line is provided; the box has third flaps connected by first fold lines to the other two walls to form a bottom of triple thickness with the double flaps over the entire surface of said bottom.

Advantageously, the third flaps are glued to the upper face of the double flaps; the upper face of the first flap is at least partially directly bonded to the lower face of the second corresponding flap, through at least one recess of the film or of a surface deprived of film; the box is made from a blank comprising a series of at least four flaps ending in a fixing tab, connected to each other by junction lines parallel to each other, and a first set of lateral flaps arranged on one side and connected to the main flaps by said first fold lines perpendicular to the junction lines, namely two double flaps interposed with two single flaps intended to form at least partially the bottom of the body, said first fold lines being aligned and said box being arranged to be mounted automatically by folding around a mandrel of said flaps, single flaps and double flaps after insertion of the plastic films in said double flaps, the end flap of the series of flaps and the tongue on the one hand, and the adjacent flaps on the other hand, being fixed together by gluing to form said box; - the suite has eight components, namely four main components separated two by two by four intermediate components.

The invention also proposes a blank for the manufacture of a composite packaging case for at least one product of non-specific shape, comprising a series of at least four main components terminated by a fixing tab, connected to each other by junction lines parallel to each other, and a first set of lateral flaps arranged on one side and connected to the main flaps by first fold lines, perpendicular to the junction lines and intended to form at least partially the bottom of the box, characterized in that the first set of side flaps comprises two non-adjacent double flaps, each double flap being constituted by a first rectangular flap connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line and by a second rectangular flap of dimensions substantially identical to those of the first flap, and arranged to be folded over said first flap with which it is connected by a double fold line. The invention will be better understood on reading the following description of particular embodiments, given by way of nonlimiting examples.

The description refers to the accompanying drawings in which:

- Figure 1 is a plan view of a blank according to a first embodiment of one invention, on which the two sheets have been arranged.

- Figure 2 is a plan view of a blank according to a second embodiment of the invention, with its two sheets.

- Figure 3 is a variant of the blank of Figure 1 with tenons.

- Figure 4 is a plan view of a set of blanks according to another embodiment of the invention, still with the two plastic sheets.

- Figure 5 is a perspective view of a half-body obtained with the blank of Figure 1. - Figure 6 is a perspective view in section on VI -VI of Figure 5.

- Figure 7 is a perspective view of a box comprising the half-box of Figure 5, after heat shrinking on a load. FIG. 1 shows a blank 1 of double-sided corrugated cardboard, for example 3 mm thick, comprising a series of four main rectangular sections 2, 3, 4 and 5, connected together by junction lines 6 and terminated by a fixing tab 7.

The blank 1 comprises a first set 8 of lateral flaps arranged on one side and connected to the main flaps by first fold lines 9, perpendicular to the junction lines, aligned with each other.

The assembly 8 comprises two identical double flaps 10, rectangular or substantially rectangular, interspersed with two single flaps 11, rectangular or substantially rectangular.

The flaps are intended to form the bottom of the box.

More precisely, each double flap 10 comprises a first rectangular flap 12 respectively connected to the flaps 2 and 4 by a corresponding first fold line 9, and a second raba ^~ 13 of dimensions substantially identical to the first flap 12 to which it is connected by a double line fold 14 parallel to the first fold line 9.

The double flap is arranged so that its free end bcrd 15 which is in fact the free end edge of the second flap 13, substantially coincides with the corresponding first fold line 9, when the second flap is folded over the first flap .

Figure 1 also shows two sheets 16 of heat shrinkable plastic film, rectangular, extending opposite the first flap and the first corresponding flap, of sufficient dimensions to allow the packaging and the holding in place of the load, as will be seen. ^' More specifically, the width of the sheets is for example, but not limited to, substantially equal to or slightly less than the width of the flap and of the first corresponding flap.

The edge 17 of the sheet 16 is glued for example by lines of glue 18 of the hot melt type on the upper face of the first flap.

The second flap is also glued, for example via the glue lines 18 extended so that, when the second flap 13 is folded, its underside relative to the direction of the box formed, is glued on top of the edge 17 of the plastic sheet.

In the embodiment of Figure 1, the single flaps 11 are smaller in the transverse direction, perpendicular to the fold lines 9, than the first and second developed flaps.

The corrugated cardboard grooves are also located perpendicular to said first fold lines 9.

FIG. 2 shows another embodiment of blank 20 according to the invention. In the following description, the same reference numbers will be used to designate identical elements.

The blank 20 comprises a series of four rectangular flaps 2, 3, 4 and 5, a first set 8 of flaps, namely two double flaps 10 and two single flaps 11 'intended to form the bottom of the box, and a second set 21 of rectangular flaps (in phantom in the figure) intended to form the cover of the box, in a manner known in itself.

In this embodiment, the single flaps 11 ′ are of the same transverse dimension as the double flaps, which makes it possible for example to have a triple thickness of cardboard over the entire bottom when the box is formed, the double fold lines 14 two opposite double flaps, once the second flaps folded and glued to the first flaps, being contiguous during the formation of the box, like the free end edges 22 of the flaps 11 'after the box has been formed.

The edges 17 of the plastic sheets advantageously extend substantially up to the double fold lines. In one embodiment, the borders have openings, for example substantially opposite the middle of the first flap, distributed longitudinally along said flap, for example three oblong or circular openings, 3 to 5 cm in diameter.

In another embodiment of the invention, the border does not go up to the double fold line 15, but on the contrary leaves an end space 17 ′, without film, which allows the cardboard to cardboard to be glued. second flap on the first flap after folding so as to insert the plastic film in the double flap thus formed. Figure 3 shows a variant 1 'of the blank of Figure 1, with five rectangular flaps, the end flap 5 and the tongue 7 being replaced by two half-flaps 5' suitable for overlapping during the formation of the box and comprising two 11 "half-flaps.

Here the end edge 15 ′ of each of the flaps also includes, for example, at least one stud, for example two rectangular studs 23 1 to 2 cm in length and 1 to 2 mm in width, arranged to come s 'snap into holes of complementary shape 24 formed at the first fold line 9 over at least part of the thickness of the corresponding flap, thereby wedging the film in said holes, thereby allowing better locking.

FIG. 4 shows a variant 1 "of the blank of FIG. 1, in which the double flaps 25 are in two parts, namely a first flap 26 secured to the rest of the blank by the fold lines 9, and a second flap 27 detached and suitable for being glued to the first flap, taking the edge 17 of the sheets 16 sandwiched between said flaps.

The free end edges 28 of the double flaps are then constituted by the edge situated on the side of the blank in FIG. 2 and are arranged to come substantially to coincide with the fold line 9 of the first flap.

There is shown in perspective in FIGS. 5, 6 and 7 the half-body 30 and / or the body 31 obtained with the blank 1 of FIG. 1.

More precisely, FIGS. 5, 6 and 7 show a half-box 30 for packaging in corrugated cardboard comprising a lateral belt 32 formed by four vertical walls corresponding to the flaps 2,

3, 4 and 5.

The half-body 30 comprises a horizontal bottom 33 secured to the belt 32 via the first fold lines 9 and two sheets 16 of a heat-shrinkable plastic material intended for packaging and holding a load 34 in place.

The half-body 30 comprises the two double flaps 10 forming the lower part of the bottom.

They are joined at their external edges formed by the double fold lines 14, their free end edge 15 coinciding with the first fold lines 9.

Each double flap encloses the end edge 17 of the corresponding sheet 16 with which it is glued on both sides, the sheets escaping respectively from the free end edges 15 substantially in contact with the first fold line to extend from said edges over a length sufficient to overlap each other by completely enveloping the load and blocking said load by thermal shrinkage of the film against the bottom 33.

The flaps 11 are moreover glued to the top of the double flaps 10 making it possible to better block the edges 17 sandwiched inside each double flap.

We will now describe the formation of the body according to the embodiment of the invention more particularly described here with reference to FIGS. 1, 5 and 7.

The blank 1 is placed flat, the double open flaps being previously glued in full or by means of lines or dots of glue 18.

The sheets 16 are then brought, successively or simultaneously, so that the end edges 17 rest on the glue lines of the first flap and / or possibly on the whole of the double flap, in which case complementary glue lines will be required on the plastic film itself.

The double flap is then folded back on itself and pressurized so as to sandwich the end 17 of the sheets 16, the second flap sticking to the plastic film which sticks itself to the first flap.

L ^r assembly is then brought under a mandrel to be formed by box for example as described in patent FR-A-2629012.

Thus, the box is automatically assembled by folding around a mandrel of the flaps, flaps and double flaps after insertion or placement of plastic films in the double flaps, the end flap 2 of the series of flaps and the tongue 7 on the one hand and the adjacent flaps 10 and 11 on the other hand being fixed to each other by gluing to form the half-box of FIG. 5. The two sheets escape respectively from the free end edges 15 substantially in contact with the first fold lines 9 to extend outward.

The load is then placed inside and the two thermoplastic sheets are closed on the load.

They are then and for example fixed at their end 40 by heat welding.

The assembly then passes into a heating oven allowing the shrinkage of the heat-shrinkable sheets on the load to obtain the packaging of FIG. 7.

The cover 41 is then put in place and makes it possible to complete the box which, after fixing the cover for example by adhesive tape, is sent, for example by post.

As is obvious and as it follows from the above, the present invention is not limited to the embodiments more particularly described. On the contrary, it embraces all its variants and in particular those where the edges or edges at the level of the double fold lines 14 of the double flaps are not contiguous once the box is formed, which saves cardboard.

This provision is particularly applicable in the case of a lower load, for example of the order of two kilograms.

Claims

1. Cash (31) of packaging cardboard or analog ^'gue for transporting a load (34), said box comprising a belt (32) formed side by at least four vertical walls (2, 3, 4, 5 ) and a horizontal bottom (33) secured to said belt via first fold lines (9), and two sheets (16) of a heat-shrinkable plastic film material intended for packaging and holding in place of said load, characterized in that it comprises two double double flaps (10, 25) opposite forming at least partially the bottom of said box, each double flap being on the one hand connected to the adjacent wall (2, 4) by a of said first fold lines and having, on the other hand, a free end edge (15, 15 ', 28) substantially in contact with said first fold line, each double flap enclosing one end (17) of a respective thermoplastic sheet with which it is stuck, said leaves escaping respectively ent from said free end edges substantially in contact with said first fold line to extend from said edges over a length sufficient to overlap each other by completely enveloping the load and blocking said load by thermal shrinkage of the film against the background.

2. Packaging box according to claim 1, characterized in that each double flap (10) comprises a first flap (12) connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line (9) and by a second flap (13), covering said first flap and connected to said first flap by a double fold line (14).

3. Packaging box according to claim 1, characterized in that each double flap (25) is constituted by a first flap (26) connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line (9) and by a second flap (27) entirely covering said first flap with which it is secured only by gluing.

4. Packaging box according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the second flap has on its edge (15) substantially in contact with the first fold line, at least one stud (23), said stud collaborating with a corresponding recess (24) made at the level of said first fold line, to provide the snap-fastening of the second flap once in place on the first corresponding adjacent flap.

5. Box according to claim 4, characterized in that the recess (24) is constituted by a groove of height at least equal to the thickness of said second flap and extending over part of the length of said junction line .

6. Packaging box according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that it comprises third flaps (11, 11 ', 11 ") connected by first fold lines (9) to the two other walls (3, 5 , 5 ') to form a bottom of triple thickness with the double flaps over the entire surface of said bottom.

7. Packaging box according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the upper face of the first flap is at least partially directly bonded to the underside of the corresponding second flap, through at least one recess of the film or a surface (17 ') devoid of film.

8. Packaging box according to any one of the preceding claims, characterized in that the box is produced from a blank (1, l ', 1 ", 20) comprising a series of at least four flaps (2 , 3, 4, 5) terminated by a fixing tab (7), connected to each other by connecting lines (6) parallel to each other, and a first set (8) of lateral flaps arranged in a side and connected to the main flaps by said first fold lines perpendicular to the junction lines, namely two double flaps (10, 25), interspersed with two single flaps (11, 11 '), intended to form at least partially the bottom of the box, said first fold lines being aligned and said box being arranged to be mounted automatically by folding around a mandrel of said flaps, single flaps (11, 11 ') and double flaps (10) after insertion of the plastic films (16) , the end flap (2) of the series of flaps and the tongue (7) on the one hand, and the adjacent flaps (10, 11) on the other hand, being fixed together by gluing to form said box.

9. Box according to claim 8, characterized in that the series comprises eight components, namely four main components separated two by two by four intermediate components.

10. Blank (1, l ', 1 ", 20) for the manufacture of a composite packaging case for at least a product of non-specific shape, comprising ur.e following at least four main components (2 , 3, 4, 5) terminated by a fixing tab (7), connected to each other by connecting lines (6) parallel to each other, and a first set (8) of lateral flaps arranged in a side and connected to the main flaps by first fold lines (9), perpendicular to the junction lines and intended to form at least partially the bottom of the body, characterized in that the first set (8) of lateral flaps comprises two double non-adjacent flaps (10), each double flap consisting of a first rectangular flap (12) connected to the side wall of the box by said first fold line (9) and by a second rectangular flap (13) of dimensions substantially identical to those of the first flap, and arranged to be folded over said first flap with which it is connected by a double fold line (14 ).