Food Packaging Tray with Finger Indent for Safe Handling
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Solution Overview
Problem
There is a need for food packaging that allows for convenient and safe preparation of convenience foods, ensuring that consumers can handle hot trays without direct exposure to steam and can easily combine food components post-heating.
Innovation Solution
The packaging consists of a base tray with a nested second tray, featuring a flange and indent design that allows for safe handling by isolating the consumer's fingers from steam, with a topping film that can be easily removed to combine food components after microwave cooking.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If the consumer directly grips the tray to handle hot food, then handling is simple, but the consumer is exposed to steam and hot surfaces causing safety issues
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary structure (protruding rim with recess) between the consumer's finger and the hot tray surface. The recess accommodates the finger while the protruding rim acts as a thermal barrier, preventing direct contact with hot surfaces and reducing steam exposure, thus enabling safe handling without compromising convenience
2Loss of time
If food components are combined immediately after heating, then preparation is faster, but the consumer must handle hot trays directly increasing safety risks
Solution Approach 1:
The packaging system is segmented into a base tray and a nested second tray that can be independently removed. This allows the consumer to remove the second tray containing a food component (e.g., sauce) separately after heating, combine it with the main food in the base tray, and avoid handling the entire hot assembled tray, thus reducing preparation time while maintaining safety
3Ease of manufacture
If the tray design is simple without additional features, then manufacturing is easier, but safe handling and controlled food combination are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by adding a specific structural feature (protruding rim with recess) only at the critical gripping location of the tray, rather than complicating the entire tray design. This localized modification enables safe finger placement and controlled handling without significantly increasing manufacturing complexity, thus resolving the contradiction between manufacturing simplicity and safety
Data Source
AI summary
Food packaging has a base tray and a second tray which nests in the base tray. The base tray has one or more walls terminating in a land. The land has an indent in its upper surface at least partially surrounded by an indent wall which extends continuously along an inward side of the indent so as to separate the indent from a main cavity formed by the base tray walls. The second tray nested has a flange supported by the land. The flange extends partially over the indent. The indent is sized to admit a finger within the indent below the flange. In consequence, after cooking of the foods in the trays, the consumer can use the indent in gripping the flange of the second tray without direct exposure to steam from the food cooked in the base tray. The consumer can then add a selected amount of food from the second tray to the base tray.