Patent ID: 8245556

Claim:
An apparatus for use in embossing a predetermined wall zone of a thin walled container having a wall thickness in the range 0.25 mm to 0.8 mm, the embossing to coordinate with a pre-printed design on the container wall, the apparatus comprising: (i) an embossing tooling arrangement comprising internal embossing tooling to be positioned internally of the container, external embossing tooling to be positioned externally of the container, the internal embossing tooling being moveable relative to the container wall between a first tooling configuration and a second wall engaging configuration; wherein, in the first tooling configuration, the internal embossing tooling can be inserted into or refracted from the interior of the container; wherein, in the second wall engaging configuration, the internal embossing tooling lies against the container wall for effecting deformation of the wall zone; and wherein the internal embossing tooling is provided with female embossing formations and the external embossing tooling has complementary male embossing formations; and ii) a reorientation arrangement to rotationally co-align the container and the embossing tooling arrangement with respect to one another for deformation of the wall zone; wherein the reorientation arrangement is first operable to rotationally co-align the container and the embossing tooling arrangement to a fixed rotational orientation with respect to one another, and then the predetermined wall zone of the container is deformed between the internal and external embossing tooling whereby the internal embossing tool moves from the first tooling configuration to the second wall engaging configuration and the external tooling part moves to engage the container wall such that the male embossing formations of the external embossing tooling deforms the container wall into the complementary female embossing formations of the internal embossing tooling.