US3009593A

US3009593A - Protective hoods or capsules for bottle tops

Info

Publication number: US3009593A
Application number: US839022A
Authority: US
Inventors: Bruun Otto Johannes
Original assignee: Individual
Current assignee: Individual
Priority date: 1958-11-27
Filing date: 1959-09-09
Publication date: 1961-11-21
Anticipated expiration: 1978-11-21
Also published as: GB925055A; NL243423A; FR1237031A; GB933015A; CH363252A

Description

Nov. 21, 1961 o. J. BRUUN 3,009,593

PROTECTIVE HOODS 0R CAPSULES FOR BOTTLE TOPS Filed Sept. 9, 1959 United States Patent Ofiice 3,009,593 Patented Nov. 21, 1961 3,009,593 PROTECTIVE HOODS R CAPSULES FOR BOTTLE TOPS Otto Johannes Bruun, The White House, Stoke Park, England Filed Sept. 9, 1959, Ser. No. 839,022 Claims priority, application Great Britain Nov. 27, 1958 1 Claim. (Cl. 215-38) 7 This invention relates to bottle capsules of the kind consisting of a conical hood of thin pliable foil, for instance aluminium foil, comprising a skirt and a top part, and designed to cover the top of a bottle neck, and closure proper for protection, decoration and security against pilfering.

The invention has for its object the provision of an improved bottle capsule of this kind, and consists broadly of a cup shaped conical bottle capsule consisting of a laminate of metal foil and paper convoluted with its overlapping edge portions glued together to form an integral truncated conical sleeve with the paper inside and the metal foil outside, the walls at the smaller end of said sleeve being folded over inwardly in overlapping flaps which are pressed and sealed together to form the closed end of the capsule.

In order that the invention may be the more clearly understood, a capsule in accordance therewith and the process of making the same will now be described, reference being made to the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIGURE 1 is a face view of a blank from which the capsule is to be formed;

FIGURE 2 is an elevation illustrating an intermediate stage in the formation of the capsule;

FIGURE 3 is an elevation of the finished capsule;

FIGURE 4 is a plan of the top of the same;

FIGURE 5 is a large scale cross section of one example of the material constituting the original blank;

FIGURE 6 is a similar view of another example of such material;

FIGURE 7 is a similar view of still another example of such material;

FIGURE 8 is a similar view of the same material as FIGURE 5 but formed with a close pattern of special relief embossments;

FIGURE 9 is an elevation showing the capsule applied to a corked bottle;

FIGURE 10 is an elevation showing the capsule applied to a bottle closed with a crown cork.

Referring to the drawings, the material of which the capsule is formed is thin metal foil 1 (FIGURES 5, 6, 7 and 8), preferably aluminium foil, in thickness between 0.007 mm. and 0.018 mm., laminated to a sheet of paper 2 by means of an adhesive 3 which may be a heat sealing material such as a wax compound. There may also be a layer of dry adhesive 4 coated on the exposed surface of the paper 2 as shown in FIGURE 6, and/or, there may be a layer of heat sealing lacquer 5 coated on the exposed surface of the foil 1 as shown in FIGURE 7.

To form the capsule, a pre-cut blank (FIGURE 1) of this laminated material is first convoluted into a sleeve 6 around a mandrel 7 of truncated conical form, with the paper inside and the metal foil outside. The edge portions of said sleeve overlap at 8 and a part of the wrapped material is left protruding beyond the smaller top 9 of the conical mandrel, as shown in FIGURE 2. The overlapping edge portions 8 are sealed together by means of an adhesive. This can be a separate adhesive applied to one edge portion of the blank in the capsule forming machine, and it may be of the heat sealing type. Alternatively the adhesive 3 (if a heat sealing compound) by which the paper 2 and foil 1 are laminated together, may be utilised for sealing said overlapping marginal portions together if heat is applied in the process of convoluting. This requires that the paper 2 shall be sufl'iciently porous to enable the melted compound to penetrate it.

The portion of the laminated sleeve which extends beyond the top of the mandrel 7 is folded in fiat overlapping sections over the top 9 of the mandrel and compressed against this to form the top part of the capsule. These overlapping sections are shown in FIGURE 4.

By providing the layer 4 of dry adhesive, it is attained that the capsule may be made to adhere to the bottle neck. This adhesive is preferably of the type which is rendered active by moisture.

The top and bottom edges of the blank (FIGURE 1) are curved. This is to compensate for the conicity of the mandrel and ensure that the bottom edge of the finished capsule shall be straight.

By making the capsule of metal foil laminated to paper, the removal of the residues of the capsules from returned bottles is very much facilitated, compared with capsules made of plain metal foil because the rinsing water will rapidly penetrate the paper from the exposed edges thereof and loosen the said capsule residues.

Thin aluminium foil laminated with paper possesses such springiness that the top part of the capsule formed by merely compressing the overlapping sections of the laminated material would be loose and unstable and this again would mean that the capsule top would not be sufiiciently stable and air tight to ensure that the cap sules could be removed and applied one by one from a stack of the capsules, by blowing compressed air between the capsules as is effected in automatic capsuling machines, because the air would tend to open up the loosely compressed flaps and escape through the capsule top instead of removing the capsule from the stack. In the present construction this difficulty is overcome by sealing the overlapping top flaps together.

This is effected by applying heat and pressure. In

one case when the compound 3, which is employed in Under heat and pressure the compound will percolate the paper 2 and where, in pressing the flaps together, two portions of the inside paper surface are pressed together, these surface portions will be sealed together.

In a further case which may be applied alone or in combination with the former case the sealing ef ect may be obtained or enhanced by coating the outside of the metal foil of the laminated material with a layer of heat-sealing lacquer 5 (as shown in FIGURE 7), as this will ensure that where two portions of the outside metal foil surface are pressed together under heat, said surface portions will be sealed together.

A further feature of the invention is that the laminated material may be embossed with a special pattern of relief embossments as shown in FIGURE 8. The embossments must be of a close irregular pattern to ensure that when two capsules are nested into one another the embossed surface of one capsule will abut against the relief tops on the surface of the next capsule whereby it is attained that the size of the interspace between the two capsules is governed by the depth of the embossments and will be at the rate of twice this depth.

To ensure a suflicient interspace between the nested capsules, the depth of the embossment should be at the rate of from 0.1 mm. to 0.2 mm. which provides an interspace between the capsules of from 0.2 mm. to 0.4 mm.

separate them one by one, and provides sufficient longitudinal distance between the capsules in the nested stack to be able to hold the second capsule in the stack while the outermost capsule is blown off. The cross section shape of the relief embossment should be of a rounded shape to facilitate the two embossed surfaces to slide along each other with as little friction as possible.

A further object of the relief embossing of the foil material is to assist the Water to penetrate between the capsule residues and the glass in removing the residues from the returned bottles in rinsing machines.

In order to ensure a perfect automatic separation of the nested capsules one by one the taper of the capsule skirt should be not less than 2 /2".

I claim:

A cup shaped conical bottle capsule consisting of a laminate of metal foil and porous paper, with an adhesive in between and a heat sealing coating on the surface of the foil, said laminate being convoluted with its overlapping edge portions glued together to form a conical sleeve with the paper inside and the toil outside, the Walls at the smaller end of the sleeve being folded over inwardly in corrugations pressed together as overlapping flaps to form the closed end of the capsule, and said flaps being sealed together under the application of heat and pressure, by the percolation of the aforesaid adhesive through the paper where paper engages paper, and by said heat sealing coating where metal engages metal.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,151,508 Glensky Mar. 21, 1939 20 2,430,459 Farrell et al. Nov. 11, 1947 FOREIGN PATENTS 83,504 Netherlands Dec. 15, 1956 296,976 Switzerland Mar. 15, 1954 25 755,592 Great Britain Aug. 22, 1956 855,917 France May 23, 1940