WO1996001182A1

WO1996001182A1 - Method and apparatus for use in connection with mounting of carton liners in freezing frames

Info

Publication number: WO1996001182A1
Application number: PCT/DK1995/000291
Authority: WO
Inventors: Mogens Nielsen
Original assignee: Cartolit A/S
Priority date: 1994-07-06
Filing date: 1995-07-06
Publication date: 1996-01-18
Also published as: AU2880895A

Abstract

Traditionally, the mounting of carton liners in freezing frames (22) is effected purely manually, based on preshaped liner blanks, but according to the invention it has been found possible and advantageous to facilitate this work by means of an auxiliary apparatus having a shaping frame (28, 30, 32), which, in operation, is placed in a centered position above the freezing frame (22), while a carton liner blank is placed centered above the shaping frame and then forced down through this frame, directly down into the freezing frame, whereby the side wall portions (6, 8, 10) of the blank are automatically erected by matrix shaping. Corner joints are not provided for, but in case of carton liners with folded corner flaps (18, 20), it is important that these flaps, when folded, be located at the exterior side of the liner, i.e. between the liner sides and the freezing frame; measures are disclosed for achieving this result with a high degree of safety and without requiring skill of the operator.

Description

Method and apparatus for use in connection with mounting of carton liners in freezing frames.

The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for use in connection with the mounting of carton liners in freezing frames. In the fresh meat industry it is a widespread practice to prepare and ship semi-large, frozen material blocks, e.g. of fish fillets, with the use of thin wrappings, so-called car¬ ton liners, which, when temporarily mounted in freezing frames, are well suited to receive the material portions to be frozen and to thereafter, subsequent to the freezing and the removal of the frame, provide protec¬ tion of and freezing separation between the blocks when these are shipped to factories for further processing the block material.

A carton liner consists of a punched out, paraffine coated carton blank prepared with folding lines defining a bottom panel and upstanding wall panels, viz. a front panel, two lateral panels and a rear panel, of which the latter is extended into a lid panel, which, along its three free edges, has projecting lid skirt flaps adapted to be folded down without any mutual connection. For achieving a corner stabilization the front and rear pa¬ nels, at their narrow ends, are provided with projecting corner flaps, which, in connection with the erection of the carton liner, are adapted to be folded inwardly along the ends of the erected side walls, at the out- sides thereof.

The carton material used is not particularly thick or stiff, and since the area of the ready, relatively low cartons is rather large, typically 48 x 25 cm, the cartons will thus be rather floppy.

It is a permanent standard, however, that the car¬ tons are used only as liners in the so-called freezing frames, i.e. rectangular, stiff frames units, in the openings of which the standard cartons will fit. Thus, for the operator it will be quite easy to lay the bottom portion of the carton into the frame, particularly when the carton has been prefolded; this may be done machani- cally or manually, and it is well possible to prefold more blanks at a time, e.g. 5-10 blanks in a pile. Thereafter the operator may take a blank from the pile and effect a breaking of carton bridges, which may occur between the rear corner flaps and the side skirt flaps of the lid, whereafter the carton is mounted in the frame with the lid projecting outwardly therefrom, such that the bottom portion of the carton is then ready to be filled with the relevant material to be frozen.

After the filling of the frame stabilized carton bottom, the lid and the side flaps thereof are folded down for a simple closing of the carton, which is there¬ after taken to a plate freezer for freezing down the material.

Upon termination of the freezing the wrapped, frozen blocks may be beaten out of the frames and shipped to the customer enterprises, whereafter the freezing frames are reused. In the relevant enterprises, the cartons, due to their treated surfaces, are easy to peel off from the frozen material blocks, which may then be further processed, and during the transportation the cartons will prevent these blocks from freezing together.

The practice here described has been used exten¬ sively for many years, and it is undeniable that the use of the large and relatively cheap cartons as kind of sacrificial liners in the freezing frames is very advan¬ tageous. The cartons are used in vast amounts. There are no really competitive alternatives, and for that reason the users have resigned to some less lucky aspects of the practice, i.e. accepted some difficulties as belong¬ ing to that technique, whereby these will constitute conditions rather than difficulties until it has been found, as in the present case, that it is possible to improve these conditions.

One of the said conditions has already been rea¬ lized to be a real problem:

When the liners are mounted in the frames it is important that the said corner flaps be brought into position between the inner side of the frame and the outside of the side walls of the bottom portion. If one or more corner flaps are erroneously placed at the in¬ side of the associated wall panel or panels they will be introduced into the space receiving the infill material, whereby they may be frozen into that material. Thus, such flaps may be present inside the frozen material when the liner is torn off therefrom, i.e. they will remain more or less invisibly in the material to be worked up, which will of course be undesirable.

Thus, for a correct mounting and closing of the liners in the frames, some manipulation with the liners will be required, which - in addition to possible errors - may involve an extensive manual touching of the inner liner side, giving rise to potential hygienic problems.

Moreover, the operator should be aware of the fact that in the filled and closed liner the wall flaps of the lid are to be positioned in the same manner as the said corner flaps, viz. located at the outside of the wall panels of the bottom portion for not being embedded in the frozen material. The awareness of this, of course, will be primarily connected with the later closing operation, but it should imply that the opera¬ tor, already at the mounting of the liner, should aim at a high degree of accuracy in order to avoid such wrynesses that might increase the risk of errors by the later closing of the liner. Thus, any tendency to wrynesses should be corrected, involving extra manipula¬ tion and mounting time. With the invention it has been realized that it is possible to avoid more of these problems by introducing an automatic handling of the liner blanks in connection with their mounting in the freezing frames and that this can be done in such an easy manner as to result in con¬ siderable advantages relative the conventional manual mounting method. The invention has its starting point in that it should be possible to handle the liner blanks in the same manner as used in connection with the erection of real, self-stabilizing carton boxes, that is with the use of a forming piston for forcing the blank through a forming matrix for the erection of all four side walls at one time. For an immediate consideration it may here¬ by seem a good possibility to directly use the freezing frame as the matrix, i.e. with a highly untraditional use of a large number of individual "return matrixes".

Already this will be an inventive concept, condi¬ tioned by automatical means for ensuring that the blanks, prior to actuation of the forming piston, are located in a very accurate position relative to the location of this piston and the freezing frames; techni¬ cally, this will be arrangeable without substantial problems.

However, with the invention it is desired to en¬ sure, by means of the piston or the matrix, that the erection of the "box" takes place such that the said corner flaps will be safely folded in along the outside and not along the inside of the upstanding bottom walls. As shown in the following it has been found possible to control this, but it has also been realized that it would be expensive to adapt all the freezing frames correspondingly.

On this background, according to the invention, it is a preferred solution to make use of a particularly designed forming matrix adapted to assume a centered position above a freezing frame and to receive a liner blank in a centered position above the matrix; there¬ after, an associated forming piston can be actuated to force the bottom portion of the blank down through the matrix for a controlled erection of the side walls and to push the blank, thus erected, directly down into the freezing frame and down to a support therefor. It is thereby achievable that the freezing frame can be lined in a fully correct manner with a minimum of attention of an operator.

Preferably, the invention provides for a matrix apparatus having an underpart for centered reception of a freezing frame inserted therein and an upper part for reception of a pile of liner blanks, such that the appa¬ ratus may work with a series of freezing frames between successive loadings of blanks into an associated blank magazine.

For the handling of liner blanks with corner flaps it has been found essential for the said push-through matrix that it is designed in such a manner that the pushing through of the blanks causes an erection of the lateral side walls not only to a vertical position, but further to an over-vertical position, whereby it will be ensured with extra safety that the corner flaps, when folded in, will be situated at the outsides of these side walls. This is achievable by the upper edge por¬ tions of the matrix being slightly projecting over the lower parts thereof, these parts corresponding to the area of the blank bottom. The bottom panel itself may yield when it is pushed through this upper, narrowed portion, and thereafter the narrowed portion will influ¬ ence the side walls in the desired manner.

In the following the invention is described in more detail with reference to the drawing, in which:

Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a known carton liner blank;

Fig. 2 is a similar view of the blank mounted as a liner in a freezing frame;

Fig. 3 is a perspective view of a primitive auxili¬ ary apparatus for mounting a liner in a freezing frame;

Fig. 4 is a sectional view thereof;

Fig. 5 is a perspective view of a preferred embodi¬ ment of an apparatus according to the invention;

Fig. 6 is a sectional view thereof;

Figs. 7 and 8 are perspective views for illu¬ strating an erection procedure; and

Fig. 9 is a top view of a detail of the apparatus.

The blank shown in Fig. 1 is a conventional carton liner blank made as a single carton piece with a coating of paraffine or the like on both sides. The blank has a bottom panel 2 limited by folding lines 4 and with ad¬ jacent wall panels, viz. a front panel 6, opposed late¬ ral panels 8 and a rear panel 10 continuing in a lid panel 12. The latter is extended into a front skirt 14 and lateral skirt flaps 16.

Certain liners consist of the sections mentioned so far, but preferably the front and rear wall panels 6,10 are provided with corner flaps 18 and 20 projecting from the opposed ends of these panels.

The carton blank is used as a liner in a freezing frame 22 as shown in dotted lines in Fig. 2; the blank is placed on the top of the frame with the bottom panel 2 located above the frame opening, whereafter the bottom panel is pushed down into this opening during or after the wall panels 6, 8 and 10 being folded up, while the lid is swung to the rear. Thereafter the frame 22 is ready to be filled, and it is then, with the lid closed, moved to a freezer. After the freezing, the frozen block as wrapped by the liner is beaten out of the frame and prepared to be shipped.

The apparatus shown in Fig. 3 is adapted to mount the liners and has a base plate 26, which has at one end an upstanding frame structure with frame rods denoted 28 at the lateral short sides, 30 at the front side and 32 at the rear side. These frame pieces, which should not necessarily meet at the corners, are carried by legs 34 mounted at the rear and the lateral sides somewhat out¬ side the respective frame rods. Hereby the frame rods 28-32 are fixed at such a level and with such a configu¬ ration that the may receive, between and below them, a freezing frame 22 inserted from the front side; this frame is guidable by the legs 34 at the lateral sides and movable into abutment with the rear legs 34 into a centered position, in which the inner sides of the frame rods are located shortly spaced right over the respec¬ tive corresponding inner sides of the freezing frame 22.

Above the frame 28-32 a piston plate 36 is mounted on a piston rod 38 of an upper cylinder 40 which, in a manner not shown, is rigidly secured relative to the base plate 26. This piston plate, when lowered, will fit into the opening of the frame 28-32 and the freezing frame, respectively, the plate being only slightly smal¬ ler than these openings.

Fig. 3 shows in dotted lines a carton liner blank B, the bottom panel of which is placed just above and centered relative to the frame 28-32, underneath the raised piston plate 36, while the lid projects rearward- ly therefrom. Preferably, non-illustrated abutment means are provided for ensuring that the carton liner, intro¬ duced from the rear, will land in this centered positi¬ on.

When thereafter the piston plate is moved downward¬ ly, the bottom panel 2 of the liner will be pushed down through the frame 28-32, whereby the side wall panels 6, 8 and 10 will be matrix raised, and by continued lower¬ ing of the piston plate the blank will thus be pushed directly down into the opening of the freezing frame 22, with the side walls already erected and with the lid portion 12 projecting upwardly as shown in Fig. 4. The liner here considered is of the type having no special corner flaps, so the mounting of the liner will cause no special problems when only the said abutment means ensure an accurate mutual centering of the freezing frame, the forming frame and the piston plate.

With the relative primitive apparatus of Figs. 3 and 4, the lined freezing frame should be removed in being returned to the free part of the base plate 26, upon raising of the piston plate. Thereby, the raised lid portion will be folded rearwardly as indicated in Fig. 4, this being directly desirable. The folding will occur progressively and be terminated when the lid passes the foremost frame portion 30. The lined freezing frame may then be taken to the place of filling and subsequent closing of the lid. The cylinder 40 may be replaced by a simple guiding bushing for the rod 38, as the piston plate may be pressed down manually, prefer¬ ably against a moderate spring bias, which will then return the plate to its upper position.

The apparatus shown in Figs. 5 and 6 is, in prin¬ ciple, designed in a similar manner, though with diffe¬ rent modifications for achieving, inter alia, that it is possible to work in the desired safe manner with carton blanks having the said corner flaps 18 and 20. Of gene¬ ral modifications, the following should be mentioned:

The apparatus is adapted to receive freezing frames which are introduced through a short side of the appara¬ tus and later let out through the opposite short side. In this manner it is easily possible to handle such freezing frames 22 , which - as shown - consist of two integrated frame units 23, while also the insertion of a new frame can be started before the preceding frame has been fully retracted. For such a pushing through of the lined frames it will only be required that the raised lid portion can be let out through a rear opening S in the outlet end of the forming frame. Thereby the lid portion may easily be brought out in it upstanding posi¬ tion for a subsequent manual laying down rearwardly, but this desired laying down may also be effected automati¬ cally by means of added guiding cam means that will fold down the lid as a result of the very discharge movement of the lined frame from the mounting apparatus.

The piston plate 36 is provided with an upstanding handle 42, which will facilitate the manual depression of this plate, and with holes 44 to facilitate the re¬ lease of the plate when it is raised after the pressing down of a blank, without the blank being brought along.

The piston rod 38 of Fig. 3 is replaced by two mutually spaced guiding rods 38' in respective guide tubes 40' supported by fixed frame members 46. These rods are particularly well suited to maintain the piston plate in an accurately centered position relative to the forming frame and the underlying freezing frame. The guide tubes 40 contain springs 48, by means of which the plate is held in its upper normal position.

The long frame rods 30 and 32 may be surrounded by rotatable tube pieces 50 for at reduction of the folding up friction.

It is an important feature that these frame por¬ tions are mounted in a level slightly below the level of the short frame side rods 28, e.g. in being secured at their top side directly to the lower side of the rods 28.

In the short frame rod 28 at the exit end of the apparatus an opening S is provided for enabling a rejec¬ tion of the vertically raised lid portion 12 of the liner.

The long frame rods 30 and 32 are mounted with a mutual spacing equal to the corresponding dimension of the bottom panels 12 of the liners, such that the front and rear wall panels 6 and 10 will be raised to a verti¬ cal position. However, the distance between the short frame rods 28 is slightly smaller than the dimension of the liner bottom, whereby the wall panels 8, when pressed through the frame, will be caused to assume a slightly inwardly and upwardly inclined position. In practice it is preferred, as illustrated in the extract¬ ed sectional view in Fig. 5, that the short frame rods are provided with a piece of round steel 50 welded to their inner top sides.

The base plate 26 is provided with optionally ad¬ justable guide rails 52 for a centered reception of an endwise inserted freezing frame, which may be a double frame as shown, and with a foremost low abutment cleat 54 for defining a fully centered position of the insert¬ ed freezing frame. After the mounting of the liner, this frame may easily be moved out to the left when its front end is given a slight lift over the cleat 54.

In connection with the rear long side of the appa¬ ratus there is arranged a blank magazine shaped as an outwardly slightly upwardly inclined plate 56 for carry¬ ing a pile of carton blanks abutting a vertical plate portion 58, Fig. 6. The magazine plate 56 is made with outer, upwardly inclined wing sections 59, which will support the side wall portions 8 and 16 on the bottom and lid panels of the blanks, respectively, such that these portions are naturally influenced to be bent slightly upwardly. At the left hand side of the plate there is a pair of upwardly and inwardly inclined flaps 60, which are used to provoke a slight mutual displace¬ ment of the carton blanks in the cross direction there¬ of, whereby the operator can more easily grip, succes¬ sively, the uppermost blank in the pile.

Each of the wing sections 59 is provided with a recess 62 located just underneath the areas in which the projecting corner flaps 18,20 of the blanks will be located, whereby it is made possible for the operator to effect a collective bending down of these flaps in the pile, such a prebending, only to a slightly downwardly inclined position, is desirable for a correct mounting of the blanks in the freezing frames.

As illustrated in Fig. 6 the rearmost rod 32 of the forming frame is located slightly in front of and in a level slightly above the top edge of the wall plate 58, whereby a blank placed on the forming frame may, in a desirable manner, have its rear wall panel 10 slanting slightly downwardly, at an angle V of only 1-2°.

In Fig. 5 it is shown that near the foremost long side of the forming frame there is mounted positioning angle pieces 64, which will ensure a correctly centered position of a blank pushed forward from the magazine to a position in which the projecting, foremost outer cor¬ ners of the side wall panels 8 of the blank engage with these angle pieces.

When the piston plate is thereafter lowered, the first result will be that the short sides of the bottom portion of the blank will be pressed against the topmost forming frame rods 28, whereby a folding up of the late¬ ral wall panels 8 of the blank bottom will be initiated immediately. This takes place from the blank shape as shown in Fig. 7, where these side panels are already slightly upwardly bent due to the action of the upwardly inclined wing sections 59 of the magazine plate 56, and where the corner flaps 18 and 20 are correspondingly slightly downwardly bent through the recesses 62 in the wing sections 59. By the folding up of the wall panel 8, the end edges thereof will be brought clearly free of the adjacent corner flaps 18 and 20.

This is further accentuated by the fact that the wall panels, due to the upper narrowing of the forming rods 28,50, will soon adopt an inwardly inclined positi¬ on as shown in dotted lines in Fig. 8.

Also the corner flaps will be influenced to an ini¬ tial folding up, viz. in being pressed against the outer portions of the short frame rods 28, outside the ends of the narrowings 50. It is hereby ensured that this fold¬ ing up will occur later than the folding up of the side walls, i.e. the corner flaps, generally, will remain outside the lateral wall panels.

Immediately thereafter a folding up of the front and rear walls 6 and 10 of the bottom portion will be initiated, see Fig. 8, this resulting in an associated upward pivoting of the corner flaps 18 and 20. It will now be fully ensured that the folding in of the corner flaps will occur inwardly against the outside of the previously raised lateral wall panel 8, such that under no circumstances the corner flaps can end up with a location at the inner side of the erected bottom portion of the blank, should even the operator be a little care¬ less about the accuracy of the centering of the blank.

By this further depression the corner flaps will be swung fully against the outside of the lateral wall panels, as they are guided down into the wedge shaped space between the carton walls and the upper roundings of the short frame rods, and they will remain stabilized in this position while the erected carton member is de¬ pressed further down into the freezing frame, which will then take over the holding of the corner flaps.

After the mounting of the liner in the freezing frame, the piston plate is returned to its starting position, and the freezing frame is pushed out of the apparatus, leaving it with the raised lid passing through the opening S in the frame rod 28. As shown in Fig. 9 it has been found suitable that the short frame rod 28 is made with an oblique facet 64 next to the opening S. For the correct folding in of the corner flaps it is important that their lower edges be progres¬ sively guided along the roundings of the frame rods, but since this guiding is interrupted at the opening S it is desirable to achieve a safe guiding contact with the lower corner flap edge at some distance from the inner corner thereof, hence the facet 64.

An apparatus according to the invention may be included as a part of a processing plant used in connec¬ tion with the packaging of fresh meat in erected frame liners. Thus, the forming frame may be mounted in a conveyor line for cleaned freezing frames, where these frames, whether as single or plural units, are advanced stepwise to a retractable stop, whereafter a liner blank is automatically brought into its relevant, accurate position. Thereafter, a power driven piston is lowered into the opening, whereby the liner is erected, and the said stop is retracted to release the freezing frame, whereafter the operation is repeated with the next unit.

Claims

C L A I M S :

1. A method of mounting carton liners in freezing frames, characterized in that a freezing frame is placed in a centered position under a forming frame having an opening substantially corresponding to the opening area of the freezing frame and the area of the bottom panel of the carton liner, respectively, and that a carton liner, preferably supplied from a liner magazine connec¬ ted with the forming frame, is placed in a position with its bottom panel centered relative to the forming frame, whereafter the liner bottom panel is pressed down by means of a plate piston for matrix erection of the liner by the forming frame and further directly down into the freezing frame.

2. A method according to claim 1 for mounting liners of the type having foldable corner flaps at the narrow ends of the front and rear bottom wall portions, characterized by the use of a forming frame designed with mutually different locations of the frame sides corresponding to the lateral side walls and the front/- rear side walls of the carton blank, respectively, in such a manner that the pressing down of the plate piston will automatically effect an initial folding up of the lateral wall portions prior to the folding up of the front and rear wall portions and an associated folding in and pivoting down of said corner flaps, all to the effect of guiding the corner flaps to be positioned at the outside of the lateral side walls.

3. A method according to claim 2, characterized by the use of a forming frame, the side portions of which corresponding to the lateral side wall portions are shaped with upper, inwardly directed protrusions of a mutual distance slightly smaller than the corresponding width dimension of the bottom panel of the carton blank, such that the erected lateral side walls of the blank are caused to be depressed into the freezing frame in slightly inwardly inclined positions prior to the fold¬ ing in of the said corner flaps.

4. An apparatus for carrying out the method accord¬ ing to claim 1, characterized in that it comprises a forming frame for centered positioning above a freezing frame and for centered reception of a overlying carton liner blank, as well as an upper pressure plate for depressing the bottom panel of the blank down through the forming frame and directly further into the freezing frame.

5. An apparatus according to claim 4, in which, for cooperation with carton liners with corner flaps, the respective pairs of opposite sides of the forming frame are located in such a differentiated manner that the piston plate, when depressed, will automatically initi¬ ate a folding up of the flapless wall portions of the blank and subsequently a folding up of the corner flap carrying side walls.

6. An apparatus according to claim 4 and provided with abutment means for a centered positioning of a freezing frame and a liner blank, respectively.

7. An apparatus according to claim 4, in which there is mounted, in connection with the forming frame, a projecting magazine plate designed with slightly out¬ wardly and upwardly inclined wing portions, in which there are open recesses at the areas corresponding to the location of corner flaps on the relevant carton blanks.

8. An apparatus according to claim 4, in which the forming frame is provided with an outlet opening next to the raised lid panel, the end of the relevant frame side facing this opening preferably being shaped with a guid¬ ing depression for the corner flaps to be bent in at this place.

9. An apparatus according to claim 4, in which the pressure plate is mounted in guiding means with return spring means, while the pressure plate is preferably made with holes for ensuring slippage from a depressed blank bottom.

10. An apparatus according to claim 4, in which means are provided for automatical liner blank supply and pressure plate actuation.