EP2001762B1

EP2001762B1 - Safety seal for closing receptacles of various closing diameters

Info

Publication number: EP2001762B1
Application number: EP06804867A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Paul Michel Laciga; Fritz Bircher; Tobias Weiermann
Original assignee: Bircher Fritz; Weiermann Tobias
Current assignee: DR. BEUCHAT & PARTNER GMBH
Priority date: 2005-12-30
Filing date: 2006-11-13
Publication date: 2011-12-14
Anticipated expiration: 2026-11-13
Also published as: EP2001762A1; WO2007076616A1; ATE537075T1

Abstract

Safety seal for closing receptacles with a tapered opening neck of various catch diameters and large closing strokes. The safety seal is attached over the actual tightening original sealing system of a receptacle to protect it against unauthorized access to the substances kept therein. Radially movable clamping wings (7) are movable inwardly to close and outwardly to open, by manual rotation of the locking ring (5) against the seal body (1) and clamp the receptacle at its opening neck. The safety seal is provided with a combination lock (2), which blocks the locking ring (5), releasing it for manipulation only with correctly inserted code. Either liquid type or non-liquid type substances like creams, pastes, powders, granulates, pills and tablets, enclosed in bottles, tubes and cans can be secured.

Description

The present invention deals with a safety seal according to the preamble of the independent claim 1.
Many top sportsmen fear not self-caused doping. To avoid the, they need a simple and reusable safety seal for bottles of beverages of all kinds, which is simple to mount and to close. Also in the case of application of technical means for tampering with should the safety seal not be opened nor be closed going unnoticed. A safety seal on receptacles with dangerous chemical substances and cleaning agents should prevent access of unauthorized pensions to poisonous and dangerous substances. To these means also counts the known child safety lock for dangerous substances, which are however not provided with a key and which therefore cannot offer 100 percent protection. There are also not liquid substances like pills, tablets, powders, pastes and creams etc., which are held in receptacles with very different closing diameters, and there is a need to secure them against unauthorized opening.
Tf the safety seal has to be applied on greatly varying receptacles, it must encompass in the opened state the largest possible diameter of the original sealing system, but also clamp onto the opening neck of the smallest possible closure diameter. The closer shall therefore provide a large closing stroke.
Today, the market offers safety seals for champagne and other wine bottles, e.g. of the EGO type with a permutation or combination lock of Leopold. Such sealing systems are not designed to close bottles of varying diameters of collar and of original closure means. Moreover, they can only be used if the original closing means are removed, and such a system is just not applicable for bottles with is drinking device as used by sportsmen.
To perform scaling, the safety seal of document WO 03/024829 uses a rotating support plate screwed in an inner side of a concave portion, so as to move vertically. Such sealing system, due to its technical structure, encompasses a relatively limited range of catch diameters of bottles, so it is intended to lock an airtight container storing expensive samples or alcoholic liquors for private use. Moreover, Fig. 2 thereby shows that the seal is to be used for bottles which get screwed to the safety seal. The locking device is closely supported through not only the rotating support plate of the upper cover supported by the cap of the storage container but also the diaphraqm plate of the lower cover, so a non-allowed person cannot open the storage container. This prior art structure also strongly limits the type of bottles for which the prior art safety seal is suitable.
The firm Kwiktop offers reusable bottle closing means for bottles with beverages. However, such means close only PET-bottles of a very narrow range of diameters- Therefore, such reusable bottle closing means are not usable for bottles with a drinking device as used by sportsmen.
In the European Patent EP-B1-1 121 300 and in further related patents there is described a safety bottle cap which possesses an indentment which can be shifted inwardly and which for its opening needs a mechanical key means which lifts the indentment. This solution is also limited to a small closing stroke and is applied to a security means against theft and to means for electronic identification of bottles. And for many applications, it is not desirably to use a mechanical key in any form.
In order to overcome all these drawbacks of the prior art, the safety seal according to the preamble of the independent claim 1 is provided with the means as defined in the characterizinq part of independent claim 1, and preferred embodiments are defined in the dependent claims thereto.
Claim 4 defines the use of such a safety seal according to one or more of claims 1 to 3.
The invention will now be described in a more specific way as shown in a non-limiting way by the drawings. They show:

Fig. 1 a safety seal for a bottle
Fig. 2 a disk with spiral slots
Fig. 3 a disk with radial guide grooves and clamping wings
Fig. 4 a cut through a mechanical permutation or combination lock for illustrative purpose only
Fig. 5 a cut through an electronic permutation or combination lock according to the invention

The safety seal consists of a seal body 1 which contains the combination lock 2 and a disk 3 with spiral slots 4. Furthermore it consists of a locking ring 5 that comprises a disk 3 with radial guide grooves 6 and clamping wings 7 running in them. Onto the locking ring 5 are holes 19, in which a pusher 10 of the permutation or combination lock is pressed inside.
With a rotation movement of the locking ring 5 against the seal body 1, the clamping wings 7 are moved due to the action of the spiral slots 4 along the radial guide grooves 6 in the desired direction away from the bottle top collar or onto the bottle top collar. Through the pitch of the spiral the necessary stroke can be dcmultiplied. By this, the rotation movement of the safety seal and the engaging of the pusher 10 in the locking ring 5 can be adjusted.
The seal body 1 and the locking ring 5 can only be rotated against each other, if the correct code combination is entered in the combination lock 2. In case of a mechanical combination lock which, however, does not form part of the present invention, the combination lock 2 consists of at least three handwheels 9, a pusher 10 and a compression spring 11. For each handwheel 9 the pusher 10 has a wedge 14 each lying on an axis. An additional surface on the pusher 10 prevents its rotation and exactly defines its position in the combination lock 2.
When the handwheels 9 are in the handwheels opened position 9a, the pusher 10 can be moved up and down and by this the safety seal can be opened or closed. When the handwheel 9 is not in this position, but in the handwheels closed position 9b, then the pusher 10 sits tightly in one of the recesses 13, so that the seal body 1 and the locking ring 5 cannot be rotated against each other and thus the clamping wing 7 be blocked.
The pusher 10 can only be moved if, after inputting the correct code combination, all handwheels 9 arc in the correct position. By rotation in the opening direction, the clamping wing 7 in the safety seal retracts. The safety seal can then be pulled over the original sealing system and the original cover is accessible.
According to the presnt invention the safety seal is carrried out with an electronic combination lock (Fig. 5). The anchor viz. armature 16 of a linear actuator 15, e.g. a lifting magnet, takes the function of the pusher 10, an additional rotatable code ring 20 on the seal body 1 is used for code inputting, and a microelectronics control 17, which is fed by a battery 18 replaceable from the outside, checks the code input and triggers the linear actuator 15. The linear actuator 15 prevents a relative rotation of the seal body 1 and the locking ring 5. The linear actuator 15 is fitted into the seal body 1 and its anchor viz. armature 16 engages in a hole 19 of the locking ring 5. When the anchor viz. armature 16 is driven out, the seal body 1 and the locking ring 5 cannot any longer be rotated against each other.
It the combination lock 2 is open, a code with at least 1 up to a maximum of 16 digits, preferably 2-6 digits, can be programmed. The code is inputted by using the rotatable code ring 20. In functional analogy with a computer mouse, the direction of the rotation and the rotation angle of the rotatable code ring 20 are sensed and evaluated. To start inputting, a preferred coding starts with a whole turn of the rotatable code ring 20. Each new code digit is then initiated by a counter-rotation and a rotation angle preferentially measured in units of 36° in order to code the digit. Is the code input correct, the linear actuator 15 is actuated and the safety seal can be opened and removed.
By this novel and inventive safety seal it is now possible to safely lock receptacles with strongly varying catch diameters and also such receptacles with large closing strokes. Tn the applications intended, the range of catch diameters which is applicable is between a minimum of 5 mm and a maximum of 100 mm with a preferred range of 20 - 45 mm for bottles and a preferred range of 6 - 25 mm for tubes and a preferred range of 30 - 100 mm for cans. It is also possible to safely lock bottles with additional drinking means.
The safety seal is rapidly mountable, can rapidly be removed and is designed to be constantly closed and reopened.

Claims

Safety seal for closing receptacles with a tapered opening neck of various catch diameters, which are attached over an original sealing system for protecting against unauthorized access to the substances kept therein, whose seal body (1) possesses a sufficiently large cavity to receive the original sealing system, which furthermore possesses a clamping mechanism with a plurality of organs acting upon the tapered opening neck and is provided with a combination lock (2) with adjustable code, which lock blocks a locking ring (5) through a pusher (10) and releases the locking ring (5) for manipulation only witch the correctly inserted code, characterized in that the clasping mechanism (1-14) possesses, as said plurality of organs, at least three clamping wings (7), which are radially movable, inwardly to close viz. outwardly to open, by manual rotation of a locking ring (5) against the seal body (1), to such an extent that they encompass receptacles having catch diameters between a minimum of 5 mm and a maximum of 100 mm and in that the clamping mechanism (1-14) combination lock is actuated by manually rotating a first disk (3) with at least three slots (4), which due to this turning are running inwards, which act as guidance for the clamping wings (7) against a second disk (3) having at least at three places on its periphery radial guide grooves (6), which act as counter-guidancc for the clamping wings (7), whereby either the first or the second disk (3) is situated in the seal body (1) and the respective other is situated in the locking ring (5), further in that the disk (3) in the locking ring 15) possesses holes (19) over the whole periphery, for locking the combination lock (2) by the action of the pusher (10), whereby the pusher (10) of the combination lock (2) is retracted from the hole (19) when the combination lock (2) is opened, so that by this the disks (3) can be freely rotated against each other, and is engaged in a hole (19) when the combination lock (2) is locked, so that then the disks (3) cannot any longer be moved against each other, and in that the combination lock is an electronic combination lock (2) with a rotatable code ring (20) on the seal body (1) for inputting a code with at least 1 up to a maximum of 16 digits, with a linear actuator (15), whose anchor viz. armature (16) actuates a pusher (10), with a microelectronics control (17), which is fed by a battery (18) which ist replaceable from the outsize, which microelectronics control recognize the coding, checks the coding and in the case of a correct result, actuates the linear actuator (15).
Safety seal according to claim 1, characterized in that said number of digits is 2-6 digits.
Safety seal according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that said coding starts with a whole turn of the rotatable code ring (20), followed for each digit by a counter-rotation and a rotation angle preferentially measured in units of 36° in order to code the digit.
Use of a safety seal according to one or more of claims 1 to 3 for securing receptacles with either liquid type or non-liquid type substances like creams, pastes, powders, granulates, pills and tablets, which receptacles have catch diameters with a preferred range of 20 - 45 mm for bottles and a preferred range of 6 - 25 mm for tubers and a preferred range of 30 - 100 mm for cans, whereby also bottles with additional drinking means can be safely locked and secured.