ARRANGEMENTS IN A PRESSING APPARATUS FOR FOLDING CARDBOARD BOXES AND CONTAINERS, AS WELL AS USE OF SUCH A PRESSING APPARATUS

Abstract: The invention relates to a folding method for empty disposable packages, e.g. milk cartons, permitting reuse collection in suitable physical standards, as well as a device for this purpose. By using a device consisting of a frame member's bottom plate (3) firmly cooperating with two longitudinal, upright, identical strings (4), one at each side, between which a pressing plate (1) is led downwardly, the opening portion of an empty milk carton placed beneath said pressing face between the strings with a glued bottom orle orientated vertically, will be closed first. Air within the carton will be compressed and exert an internal pressure against i.a. the bottom side, which will be blasted outwardly and deformed to a single-walled and triangular point, before the air escapes through the opening. The thickness of such a compressed carton allows twenty empty cartons to be inserted into one, which is 50 % more than normal. The pressing plate (1) of the device is hinged between the lower and outer part of the strings (4), so that a directed pressure against the handle (5) of the pressure plate (1) will do the folding function.

Description: ARRANGEMENTS IN A PRESSING APPARATUS FOR FOLDING CARDBOARD BOXES AND CONTAINERS, AS WELL AS USE OF SUCH A PRESSING APPARATUS The invention relates to a folding method for empty disposable packages, e.g. milk cartons allowing reuse collection in suitable physical standards, and a device for the purpose. Transition to use of standardized disposable packages has developed strongly in modern time and contributed to a well arranged flow of goods from the producer through the trade links to the consumer. The producers have achieved a very rational production process; storage and transport are based on an consistent standardization of the physical measures of trade and consumer units, simultaneously as requirements to hygienics can be taken care of in a controllable way. The distribution channels have derived great advantages through this transition to standardized disposable package, and it is difficult to imagine a reversed development, even if, from a social point of view, valuable material is occupied which, after one time's use, has ended its function when surrounding the primary product for a relatively short period. Such disposable packages have to an increasing degree flooded the consumer society, and given us a waste problem of large dimensions. The waste has simultaneously assumed a constantly more superior form, as highly developed products having a high raw material value and maybe large volume, after a short time's use as package, nevertheless will represent a problem, even if the individual components thereof are in fact a raw material resource. In order to define such a used package resource as such, it is decisive to separate therefrom other waste and other raw materials. All waste recovery is, in principle, based on separation, thus removing the individual components from the collected mass in a secure and cheap way, preferably without hired labour. On account of the foregoing, the term "'source sorting 1 ' has arose; it is important that the consumer himself/ herself makes the separation of the individual components valuable enough to take care of, as seen from the society's point of view and, likewise, that the society organizes and takes the necessary steps for collection and reuse of the sorted out raw materials, so that a sensible cooperation between consumer, who takes care of the sorting work, and the society, seeing the utilitarian value. By means of pledging arrangements and automatic receipt, standard bottles are recovered through the same trade links as those selling the products in the first instance. Other glass of non-standard quality is collected in container systems. Accumulator batteries containing environmental poison are assigned their own arrangements, etc. Normal household waste is today sorted by consumer into two or three fractions, of which clean paper for reuse has become the largest variant. Some places, clean organic waste is sorted from the collected waste for municipal compost heaps. Remaining garbage is characterized as rubbish, and is buried on municipal refuse dumps. In this last rubbish fraction, e.g. both high grade aluminum cans as well as plastics of very mixed origins having various chemical properties. Additionally, a consumer normally transfers also all kinds of juice and milk cartons to this rubbish fraction. Juice cartons may have the same measures as milk cartons, but may also have very different external measures. Moreover, such cartons are internally foliated with aluminum, which becomes a disturbing factor upon reuse. It is, however, not excluded that the present method, taking a long view, also may be used in connection with such juice cartons. Standard milk cartons are made from virgin, non- recirculated wooden fibres of very high quality. The mass price for such fibres are among the very highest paid prices in the market thereof. These cartons having exactly the same standard measures, are coated with plastic both internally and externally in order to give the milk the protection required to maintain taste and hygienics, and they are, therefore, a very high grade, but expensive package, as seen relatively. Much work has been carried out in order to achieve a satisfactory return arrangement for these milk cartons, both because of the value they actually represent, but also because the volume constitutes a large part of the waste and increases the need for refuse dumps and the care thereof. Return arrangements have i.a. failed on the account of cleaning the milk cartons through rinsing which can not be expected to be carried out satisfactorily. The main reason, however, is that it up to now has not been available technology on the market to separate the approximately 12% of plastics coating the external side faces of the carton, from the cardboard material of the carton. Now, in Norway, refined and expensive U.S. technology has been installed. Through an advanced process the foregoing object is achieved, not only resulting in that clean cardboard fibres are separated out, but also in that the plastics used, having as high a burning value as petrol, become separated out and may be used to drive the process. Today, this technology requires large plants in order to obtain a sensible economy, but the likelihood of reducing the size of these plants is large. There has been initiated smaller collection campaigns for milk cartons, i.a. in the Oslo region and in Rogaland, and the possibilities for reuse seem gradually to be revealed in our country also. On the European continent, approximately 800 000 tons of milk and juice cartons constitute the annual tonnage which up to now has been buried on refuse dumps. In Rogaland, the annual production is approximately 45 million milk cartons, each weighing 28 grams. For the whole country, the production of the dairies is somewhere between 700 and 800 million units or approximately 22 400 tons. From the patent literature, i.a. the following is known: U.S. 2 800 160 discloses a device for clamping together empty tins and the like. The deforming compression is achieved by means of a hinged and rotary face which is clamped against a fixed support, thus reducing the volume of the tins, but the clamped body has no standard shape suited for any kind of joining or stacking. Likewise, the U.S. patent specification discloses a more assembled device which, with a pivotal pressing face against a fixed support, upon a first pressing operation folds the tin and, thereafter, by turning the folded tin right-angled, compresses the tin with a new pressing operation, but the compressed body has no standard shape suited for stacking or other joining of a plurality of such bodies. EP 0 089 399 discloses a manual press for use in the making of a briquette-shaped fuel material of primarily moistened newspaper, disposed in a box-shaped body having a corresponding face subjected to manual compression by means of a pivotal pressing arm. Obviously, the purpose is not to fold or press or clamp together disposable package to any form of standard units. The present folding method enables collection for reuse purpose in suitable physical standards of e.g. milk cartons in that the invention relates to a manual special folding device. Figure 1 shows a cut-through model of the device, an empty milk carton being placed therein; the opening facing towards the pressing member's 1 fastener at a through bolt 2 in the U-shaped frame part. The frame part's bottom plate 3 is firmly attached at each side thereof to identical upright strings 4 the mutual spacing thereof only to a small extent exceeding the width of a standard milk carton. E.g., the frame part may be made of extruded aluminum. Through the lower and outer portion of both strings 4, a hole has been drilled for the passage of a hinge bolt 2, also extending through a drilled hole in the pressing member 1 carrying a handle 5. The pressing member 1 with handle 5 is formed of e.g. hard wood, aluminum or of combination of other suitable material, and has a shape and a thickness withstanding the forces it shall exert against a milk carton, in order to achieve the deforming folding of the carton, as well as the forces to which the material around the bolt 2 are subjected. The pressing member's 1 width dimension is only to a little degree smaller than the spacing between the inner side faces of the strings 4. From the producers, a milk carton is made through gluing together the bottom in a lateral orle. This orle or seam shall always be turned to a vertical position before the carton with its opened top part is passed into the device, down between the strings 4 and forward to the bolt 2. When the pressing member 1 is forced down manually, the open portion will first receive the pressure and, thereby, close. Upon a further downwardly directed pressure of the pressing member 1 against the bottom plate 3 serving as abutment, a compression of the carton will take place, simultaneously as air within the carton, at first will exert an internal pressure i.a. against the bottom side, which is pressed out and deformed to a triangular point, before the air is let out through the opening. This pressing out and deforming of the bottom section result in that the compressed carton exhibits such a thickness that twenty such units might be inserted into one empty non-compressed carton, the ordinary number being ten units. If the carton is inserted into the device erroneously, i.e. bottom orle extending horizontally, such a triangular point can not be pressed out. On the contrary, such an erroneously compressed carton may be strectched manually, and be placed correctly. bottom orle pointing vertically, and it is then possible to obtain the correct triangle blasting. Four emptied cartons each filled with twenty compressed cartons are, thereafter, placed into a household collector 6 made of the same fibre quality with e.g. four standing which will then, together contain eighty- four cartons, weighing approximately 2,4 kilograms. On a wooden fibre pallet 7 having standard measures, it will be possible to stack one layer containing 8 x 5 units, and with four layers a pallet will carry 13 440 empty milk cartons, weighing approximately 385 kilograms. With e.g. twenty-four pallets 7 on a car, it will convey 322 560 cartons, weighing approximately 9,2 tons. All pallets from any municipality will contain the same number and have the same dimensions, permitting stacking upon storage and transport to recirculation plant by car, train or ship, if desirable. Transferred to standard pallets, the Rogaland Dairy's annual production will constitute approximately 210 full trucks, the corresponding production of Norway being of the order of 3200 full trucks or approximately 22 400 tons.

Claims: m 1. Arrangements in a pressing apparatus for folding cardboard cartons, e.g. cardboard cartons for milk, juice, etc., comprising a plan, elongated, in use horizontal ground plate (3) and an elongated pressing plate (1) movable towards and away from the ground plate (3) and exhibiting a plan pressing face which, at one end thereof, is pivotally disposed about an axis (2) parallel to the upper face of the ground plate (3) and extending laterally of the longitudinal direction of the pressing plate (1), c h a r a c t e r i z e d i n that the upper abutment face of the ground plate (3) for the opposing pressing face of the pressing plate (1) , laterally is defined by means of side walls (4) having free upper edges and the mutual spacing thereof substantially corresponding to the lateral dimension of the cardboard cartons concerned, and that the pivot axis of the pressing plate (1) is established by means of a lateral bolt (2) mounted in the side walls (4) at a distance from said abutment face of the ground plate (3) substantially corresponding to a compressed cardboard carton's dimension in a folded condition. 2. Use of a pressing apparatus as defined in claim 1 for folding cardboard cartons, e.g. cardboard cartons for milk, juice, etc., utilizing the folding lines of the cardboard carton, and wherein the cardboard cartons are of the kind in which the bottom, which is folded from a turned in and uniformly tubular cardboard carton end portion, comprises two opposing, triangle formed fields (9, 10), one corner of one of said fields meeting a corner of the other field at the center of the bottom, said fields having a thickness corresponding to three times the cardboard wall thickness, while the remaining fields (7, 8) each has a thickness corresponding to the cardboard wall thickness only, the visible termination edge (12) at the outer face of the bottom extending parallel to two opposing bottom edges, at a small distance from an imagined central line being orientated right-angled to the ground plate's (3) upper face, in order to secure optimal utilization of the folding lines of the cardboard carton and, thus, maximum folding of the cardboard carton concerned, including bottom and opening portions.

Inventors: HOVDA OLAV, HOVDA, OLAV
Applicants: HOVDA OLAV, HOVDA, OLAV
Application year: 1998
Main classification: B30B9
IPC codes: B30B1, B30B9