Drink bottle
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing drink bottle lids with flexible spouts or straws are complex, often requiring multiple parts and components that can pose choking hazards and increase manufacturing costs, while still needing to maintain functionality and safety standards.
Innovation Solution
A drink bottle design featuring a slidable actuator with a bearing surface that engages with the spout or straw assembly, allowing for simple operation and reduced parts, eliminating the need for separate springs or tubes, and providing additional functions like lid locking or venting.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If existing drink bottle lids use multiple parts and components (separate slides, buttons, springs), then the mechanism can achieve lid locking and releasing functions, but the device complexity increases and small parts become choking hazards
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines the slide, button, and spring components into a single integrated actuator assembly. The actuator includes a body with a bearing surface that directly engages the spout assembly, eliminating the need for separate slides and buttons. The resilient member is contained within the actuator body, merging multiple functional elements into one unified component that reduces complexity while maintaining the lid locking function.
Solution Approach 2:
The actuator serves multiple functions: it locks the lid closed through bearing engagement with the spout assembly, releases the lid when actuated, and contains the resilient member for automatic return. This multi-functional design eliminates the need for separate components dedicated to each function, thereby reducing the overall number of parts while maintaining reliable operation.
2Reliability
If existing drink bottle lids use separate slides and buttons for operation, then the lid can be locked and released, but manufacturing costs increase due to multiple components
Solution Approach 1:
By merging the slide, button, and spring into a single actuator assembly, the patent reduces the number of parts that need to be manufactured, assembled, and quality-checked. This integration simplifies the manufacturing process and reduces costs while maintaining the reliable lid securing function through the bearing surface engagement with the spout assembly.
3Ease of operation
If drink bottle spouts are made resiliently flexible for automatic lid return, then the lid can automatically return to closed position, but the spout becomes deformed during actuation
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the automatic return function from the spout by introducing a separate resilient member (spring) that is contained within the actuator body. This allows the spout to maintain its shape and structural integrity while the resilient member provides the necessary force for automatic lid return, eliminating the deformation issue associated with using the spout itself as the resilient element.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The solution simplifies the drink bottle lid mechanism, reduces costs, and enhances safety by eliminating small parts that could be choking hazards, while maintaining effective operation and adding features like automatic lid closure and venting.
Implementation Method 1
the actuator having a bearing surface in bearing engagement with the spout or straw assembly such that movement of the actuator from the home position towards the actuation position resiliently deforms the spout or straw assembly and by the resilient deformation the actuator is biased towards the home position
Data Source
AI summary
A drink bottle comprises a container and a lid. The lid is removably connected to an open end of the container. A resiliently flexible drinking spout or straw assembly is mounted in the lid. An actuator for actuating a function of the drink bottle is slidably mounted to the lid for sliding movement between a home position and an actuation position. The actuator has a push face accessible from outside the lid for receiving finger pressure for displacing the actuator from the home position toward the actuation position for performing a function of the drink bottle. The actuator has a bearing surface in bearing engagement with the spout or straw assembly such that movement of the actuator from the home position towards the actuation position resiliently deforms the spout or straw assembly and by the resilient deformation the actuator is biased towards the home position.