Method and apparatus for product packaging

Abstract

A method and apparatus for packaging items, such as meat, non-meat products and non-food products, using ultrasound or heat is disclosed herein. In a preferred embodiment, a continuous thermoplastic tubular mesh material is used to package multiple meat products. The preferred packaging method does not use metal clips as in conventional packaging, and instead uses thermal energy, ultrasonic energy, or other types of energy to create seals in the packaging material itself. The method advantageously causes one seal to be formed between each pair of adjacently packaged products. This single seal can be cut in half thereby creating two seals, one seal for each adjacently packaged product.

Description

[0001] Not applicable.[0002] Not applicable.[0003] 1. Field of the Invention[0004] The present invention relates to the packaging industry. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for packaging meat products and other foods, but may apply to other non-food items as well.[0005] 2. Description of the Related Art[0006] Almost everything consumers purchase is packaged in some way or another. Accordingly, there are many packaging methods in use today. Choosing a packaging method often depends on many variables such as size of the item to be packaged, whether the item is perishable, cost, and other considerations. For example, one ubiquitous type of packaging technique for a meat product (e.g., turkey, ham, chicken) includes enclosing the product in a mesh material or plastic, and sealing either end with metal clips or some other type of "foreign object" (i.e., an object or material different from the material that encloses the product).[0007] Although g...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0009] In accordance with the preferred embodiment, the second seal may be severed while making the second seal in order to separate the first packaged product from a subsequently packaged product. As an alternative to severing this second seal during is formation, the seal may be perforated such that the packaged products subsequently may be separated by pulling them apart. Further, the seal may be left intact entirely, resulting in a chain of meat products that can be separated at a later time using scissors or other cutting tools to manually sever the seals. In addition, the seal may be formed in such a way as to convey identification information. For example, a company that has many factories may want to be able to identify which factory a product is from. Accordingly, imprinting identification information on the seal while it is being formed makes this possible. Also the seal may be formed in any shape (e.g., company logo, round, square).

[0011] By not using foreign objects, the problems discussed above regarding such objects are avoided. Further, being able to effectively create two seals at a time (i.e., one seal that is severed in two) permits the packaging process to occur more efficiently than many traditional packaging assembly lines. These and other aspects and benefits of the preferred embodiments of the present invention will become apparent upon analyzing the drawings, detailed description and claims, which follow.

Problems solved by technology

Although generally satisfactory, the meat packaging technique described above is not problem free.

For example, occasionally, metal clips may dislodge and become embedded in the meat product itself.

Visual inspection usually catches this problem.

Such metal detectors are expensive and require maintenance.

Another disadvantage of using metal clips is that each meat item requires at least two clips, with one clip on either side of the packaged product.

When packaging tens of thousands of items, or more, the cost of the clips becomes significant and thus this type of packaging can be costly in a factory setting where large scale processing occurs.

Another disadvantage of using foreign objects to seal the ends of the mesh is that it requires the mesh to be cut, after which strands of the cut end may break loose and end up in the meat product.

In addition, although individual, pre-cut bags may be used to independently wrap meat products without the necessity of metal clips, using them often requires the cumbersome process of tying knots, which also is undesirable in a large scale factory setting.

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