EP1809567B1

EP1809567B1 - Tap for dispensing liquids from vessels

Info

Publication number: EP1809567B1
Application number: EP05760566A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Diego c/o Vitop Moulding S.R.L. NINI
Original assignee: Vitop Moulding SRL
Current assignee: Vitop Moulding SRL
Priority date: 2004-11-10
Filing date: 2005-07-05
Publication date: 2009-03-11
Anticipated expiration: 2025-07-05
Also published as: EP1809567A1; DE602005013267D1; ATE425119T1; ITTO20040789A1; WO2006051569A1

Abstract

A tap (1) is disclosed for dispensing liquids from a vessel, comprising: an elongated cylindrical support body (3) with fitting means (5) with the vessel, closed with a plug (7), and laterally equipped with a liquid outlet opening (8); a control member (9) for opening and closing actuatable through a thrust on wing-shaped projecting members (11); and a valve member (12) operatively connected to the control member (9) and equipped with a liquid passage opening (14).

Description

The present invention refers to a tap for dispensing liquids from vessels, such as known from FR 2 619 612 A .
Document EP 1 498 359 A , published after the priority date of the present application, discloses a tap having a valve element comprising a spring leaf.
Various configurations of taps of this type are known in the art, some of which derive from document EP-A-0432070 , which can be called the parent of this product. The prior tap disclosed in this document, as main characteristics, provides for: an opening/closing control plunger equipped with outwards projecting wings; plunger guides on the tap body; a removable warranty seal; a resilient membrane that performs the seal and automatically returns to its initial closing position; a particular geometry in the connection to the vessel.
Starting from this solution, some variations have been developed, that however have a high number of component parts, and therefore high manufacturing costs, and a seal that is not always satisfactory. For example, taps are known that are equipped with dome-shaped valve members contained inside the tap body; the dome-shaped part of the valve member is squashed against the body itself when opening and bents over itself. This arrangement, however, in order to be realised, needs a high number of parts.
Object of the present invention is solving the above prior-art problems, by providing an improved dispensing tap that is made of a minimum number of parts, is equipped with an internal sealing membrane, that is the main tap member, that allows realising both closing and opening automatic operations of the tap, and a greater oxygen seal, also due to the high-sealing elastomeric material of which it is composed.
A further object of the present invention is providing a tap as stated above that realises a double seal of the plunger on the body, thereby obtaining a high increase of oxygen barrier, due to a further seal of the above-mentioned membrane. The oxygen barrier improvement is further obtained due to the fact that the closure is directly performed on the disk, removing all leakages due to various externally exposed parts (that allow oxygen to pass from the plastic material structure and from various part couplings); moreover, all system members are, for such purpose, housed on the plug back with respect to the dispensing area, and therefore the coupling leakage of parts to the outside is thereby removed.
The tap is equipped with a high oxygen barrier and a protection of members, that are usually made of very brittle plastic material which do not supports aseptic treatment cycles, while here, being inside, these members are protected by the body structure that supports aseptic cycles. Moreover, the majority of aseptic taps must necessarily weld, on the liquid outlet mouth, a cover, usually made of aluminium, to guarantee the outlet mouth protection and the protection of internal members from treatments, above all thermal ones, while in this case the seal is guaranteed even without covers. Thereby, the tap is adapted for aseptic applications, and therefore for aseptic treatments, which, sometimes, can be damaging and therefore unable to be applied to some types of taps, since their dispenser must be subjected to sterilising cycles with hot steam or with gamma rays, or distilled water or other agents (also mutually associated), that in some cases are aggressive, impairing the closure operation.
For its realisation, the tap has an automatic closure with drop-preventing system, and is further equipped with a warranty seal that also protect the liquid outlet hole.
Moreover, the disk geometry with which the body is equipped immediately orients the tap in its correct position, highly helping the vessel manufacturing companies, above all bag-shaped vessels, that manage to assemble the tap onto the union immediately in their correct position.
The body-cap assembling can be provided as engagement, or through hot, laser or ultrasound welding.
Moreover, the tap is made with compact sizes with respect to other taps that can be found on the market in a "light" version.
The above and other objects and advantages of the invention, as will appear from the following description, are obtained by a dispensing tap as claimed in Claim 1. Preferred embodiments and non-trivial variations of the present invention are claimed in the dependent Claims.
The present invention will be better described by some preferred embodiments thereof, given as a non-limiting example, with reference to the enclosed drawings, in which:

Figure 1 is a perspective view of an embodiment of the tap according to the present invention;
Figure 2 is a perspective view of the tap support body of Fig. 1;
Figure 3 is a sectional view of the tap in Fig. 1;
Figure 4 is a detailed view of Fig. 3;
Figure 5 is a top view of the wing-shaped control member of the tap in Fig. 1;
Figure 6 is a sectional view performed along line A-A in Fig. 5;
Figure 7 is a perspective view of the valve member of the tap in Fig. 1;
Figure 8 is a top view of the valve member of Fig. 7;
Figure 9 is a side view of the valve member of Fig. 7;
Figure 10 is a sectional view performed along line A-A in Fig. 9;
Figure 11 is an exploded side view of the tap in Fig. 1;
Figure 12 is a sectional view of the tap in Fig. 1 in its opening position; and
Figure 13 is a sectional view that points out a lip position of the inventive tap.

With reference to the Figures, a preferred and non-limiting embodiment of the dispensing tap 1 of the invention is described. It will be immediately obvious to the skilled person in the art that the described tap can be made in equivalent shapes, sizes and parts, and could be used for various types of vessels, for example the so-called "bag-in-box" vessels, but also those of a rigid type or others.
The tap 1 of the invention is used for dispensing liquids from a vessel (not shown), and substantially comprises:

an elongated cylindrical support body 3 equipped at one end with fitting means 5 with the vessel and adapted to be closed, at another opposite end, with a plug 7; such support body 3 is laterally equipped with at least one first opening 8 for making liquid go out;
a control member (or plunger) 9 for opening and closing the tap 1, in which the control member 9 is slidingly contained inside the support body 3 and is able to be actuated through a thrust (for example of the fingers of a hand) on at least one wing-shaped projecting member 11 with which it is equipped; and
at least one dome-shaped valve member 12 (preferably of the membrane type) contained inside the support body 3, in which such valve member 12 is operatively connected to the control member 9 and is equipped with at least one second opening 14 for making liquid pass therethrough; the valve member 12 is adapted, when opening the tap 1, to be pulled by the control member 9 in order to communicate the first opening 8 with the at least one second opening 14, and is adapted, when closing the tap 1 when the pulling force onto the control member 9 ceases, to go back to its initial rest position, due to its dome-shaped configuration whore concavity is oriented inside the vessel (differently from the known valve members, that are oriented exactly in the opposite direction).

In particular, in the above-mentioned tap 1, the second openings 14 are four, of the type with circular section: such openings 14 are possibly used for compensating the vacuum inside the valve member 12 upon pulling for opening (with an effect that is similar to a basin unclogging device, that sometimes realises a vacuum effect and does not go back to its rest position).
In particular, in the above-described tap 1, the control member 9 is made in a cylindrical shape adapted to slide inside the support body 3 and is equipped with an end 20 externally diverging with respect to its axis with a particular flexing geometry: such end 20 is adapted to elastically engage an internal surface of the support body 3 in order to guarantee a liquid seal between the support body 3 and the control member 9.
Moreover, the valve member 12 is equipped with an external lip 22 adapted to abut (through nose sliding) against the support body 3 to guarantee a liquid seal, at any time, between support body 3, valve member 12 and manoeuvre member, also because the membrane valve member 12 seal only occurs when the tap 1 is closed.
The lip 22 is further realised with a lead-in shape that is elastically deformed and that helps overturning when assembling (when the membrane will have to exceed a restricted area in the body 3: the lip 22 will then have the capability of being almost completely overturned (as can be better seen in Fig. 13) allowing its passage and then of returning to its initial position), obviously in addition to the following seal during its operating stage.
In order to facilitate the clamp by the fingers of a hand, then, the wing-shaped projecting members 11 are preferably equal to two.
The inventive tap 1 is further equipped with sealing means 30 adapted to guarantee the tap 1 itself against possible tampering.
In particular, the sealing means 30 are composed of a band 30 that is spirally wound around the neck of the support body 3 and ending in a tongue 32 for clamping and tearing the band 30, which is removably connected (for example, through small plastic bridges in 34) to the plug 7, and which is further connected with itself (through similar points in 36). The tongue 32 pulling operation generates first of all the tearing of points 36 and then the tearing of points 34, freeing thereby the plug for its use.
Figure 4 shows, still in particular, the sealing points between body 3 and valve 12, which are obviously the most delicate one in this context. References designates the sealing offset of the end 22 with the corresponding elbow 42 of the control member 9, in which the valve member 12 rests on a hemisphere layout that is not in axis, and therefore is offset, with respect to the body 3 resting on the hemisphere layout. The overturned lip 44 of the control member 9 its also shown, that also operates as dampener for compensating the member 12 pull. The lip 44 is stamped first of all as straight, to facilitate its stamping, that in such case is economical, exploiting the plastic distortion and the particular geometry of the lip 44 itself. In this way, there are no materials that have excessive elastic return, and instead remain rather "rigid". The particular lip 44 will then be mechanically overturned in a post-stamping step, thereby creating a sealing undercut of the flexible membrane valve member 12 (as can be better seen in Fig. 6).
Due to these various sealing parts, the main closure occurs immediately on disk 46 of the body 3, thereby eliminating all micro-leakages that instead occur in the majority of commercialised taps. In such a way, the oxygen barrier is optimised, due to the fact that, in addition to seals realised both by member 9, and by member 12 on the body 3, the tap 1 closure is directly performed on the disk 46, removing the leakages due to various parts exposed towards the outside: all system members are in fact suitably housed on the back of the tap 1.
Moreover, as mentioned above, the vessel can be of the "bag-in-box" type and then the tap 1 is adapted to assume a horizontal operating position with respect to such vessel.
Alternatively, always with a vessel of the "bag-in-box" type, the tap 1 can be adapted to assume a vertical operating position with respect to the vessel.
As regards the operation of the tap 1 of the invention, with particular reference to Fig. 3 and 12, the closing and opening positions of the tap 1 can be respectively noted, in which the valve member 12 assumes a stretched and squashed configuration, due to its inherent resiliency, and due to the dome-shape of which it has been made. Moreover, due to the engagement with the control member 9 (in 40), it is pulled and is distorted (and therefore operates) in an opposite position with respect to known control members.
With a tap 1 as mentioned above, composed of a very reduced number of parts and therefore of a reduced cost as well, it is possible to realise an efficient oxygen barrier through the three different above-mentioned seals, together with the closure that is directly performed on the disk.

Claims

Tap (1) for dispensing liquids from a vessel, comprising:
- an elongated cylindrical support body (3) equipped at one end with fitting means (5) with said vessel and adapted to be closed, at another opposite end, with a plug (7), said support body (3) being laterally equipped with at least one first opening (8) for making liquid go out;

- a control member (9) for opening and closing said tap (1), said control member (9) being slidingly contained inside said support body (3) and being able to be actuated through a thrust on at least one wing-shaped projecting member (11) with which it is equipped; and

- at least one dome-shaped valve member (12) contained inside said support body (3), said valve member (12) being operatively connected to said control member (9) and being equipped with at least one second opening (14) for making liquid pass therethrough, said valve member (12) being adapted, when opening said tap (1), to be pulled by said control member (9) in order to communicate said first opening (8) with said at least one second opening (14), said valve member (12) being adapted, when closing said tap (1) when the pulling force onto said control member (9) ceases, to go back to its initial rest position, due to its dome-shaped configuration whose concavity is oriented inside the vessel.
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said control member (9) is made in a cylindrical shape adapted to slide inside said support body (3) and is equipped with an end (20) externally diverging with respect to its axis, said end (20) being adapted to elastically engage an internal surface of said support body (3) in order to guarantee a liquid seal between said support body (3) and said control member (9).
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said valve member (12) is equipped with an external lip (22) adapted to abut against said support body (3) to guarantee a liquid seal between said support body (3) and said valve member (12).
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said wing-shaped projecting members (11) are two.
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that it is further equipped with sealing means (30) adapted to guarantee said tap (1) against possible tampering.
Tap (1) according to claim 5, characterised in that said sealing means (30) are composed of a band (30) that is spirally wound around the neck of said support body (3) and ending in a tongue (32) for clamping and tearing said band (30), said tongue (32) being removably connected (in 34) to said plug (7), said tongue (32) being further connected with itself (in 36).
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said second openings (14) are four, said second openings (14) being used to compensate a vacuum inside said valve member (12) upon its pulling it for opening it.
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said vessel is of a "bag-in-box" type and said tap (1) is adapted to assume a horizontal operating position with respect to said vessel.
Tap (1) according to claim 1, characterised in that said vessel is of a "bag-in-box" type and said tap (1) is adapted to assume a vertical operating position with respect to said vessel.