Honeycomb Buffer Forming With Controlled Bending Deformation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current honeycomb packaging materials face challenges in maintaining a preferred buffering effect while ensuring smooth and fast continuous production, as they suffer from uneven deformation and high shipping costs due to the need for complex manufacturing processes that compromise structural integrity and stability.
Innovation Solution
A method involving a roller unit that clamps and conveys a honeycomb core through feed, shaping, and rebound stages, using friction wheels to control deformation and form hexagonal honeycomb bodies with controlled bending, ensuring minimal deformation and consistent expansion.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If complex manufacturing processes are used to maintain structural integrity, then buffering effectiveness is improved, but production speed and efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The honeycomb core is pre-formed with a specific geometric pattern before expansion. This preliminary structuring allows the material to maintain structural integrity during rapid expansion and cutting processes, enabling high-speed production while preserving buffering effectiveness. The pre-formed core structure serves as a template that guides the subsequent manufacturing steps.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms the honeycomb core from a compressed state to an expanded state, changing its volume and structural parameters. This parameter change enables the material to achieve optimal buffering characteristics after expansion, while the controlled nature of this transformation maintains consistency and reliability in the final product.
2Loss of substance
If high expansion ratios are used to reduce shipping volume, then shipping cost is reduced, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The manufacturing process is divided into distinct sequential stages: pre-forming the honeycomb core, expanding it to the desired volume, and then cutting it to final dimensions. This segmentation allows each stage to be optimized independently, achieving high expansion ratios without proportionally increasing overall manufacturing complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The expansion and cutting operations are performed in continuous sequence without interruption. The honeycomb core is expanded and immediately cut while maintaining its expanded state, eliminating the need for intermediate handling or repositioning. This continuous process reduces manufacturing complexity despite the high expansion ratio required.
3Manufacturing precision
If uniform deformation control is implemented during forming, then product quality consistency is improved, but production efficiency deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The cutting process is designed to occur at specific locations away from the center of the honeycomb core structure. This local consideration ensures that cuts are made in regions where deformation is more uniform and structurally sound, improving product quality consistency without requiring control of the entire structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The honeycomb core is pre-expanded to its final volume before the cutting operation. This preliminary expansion ensures that the entire structure, including the regions where cuts will be made, achieves uniform deformation characteristics before the cutting process begins, maintaining quality consistency while enabling efficient sequential processing.
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 method achieves stable, efficient production of buffers with maintained buffering effectiveness by controlling deformation to less than 10% average, reducing shipping costs and ensuring consistent product quality.
Implementation Method 1
the honeycomb core is pressed and conveyed by a pressing-conveying force generated through outer surfaces of the first upper rolling friction wheel and the first lower rolling friction wheel rubbing against the sheet materials
Implementation Method 2
At the rebound stage, two folds are formed respectively on a top portion and a bottom portion of each of the thick surrounding walls in the height direction
Data Source
AI summary
A buffer forming method comprises following steps of: providing a honeycomb core, and providing a roller unit to clamp the honeycomb core for continuous pressing and conveying in a stretching direction, and to make the honeycomb core become a buffer through a feed stage, a shaping stage, and a rebound stage. The roller unit defines a feed region, a distance of which is greater than 70% of a height of a sheet material and the distance of which is smaller than the height of the sheet material, in order to make an average bending deformation degree of a plurality of intermediate segments of the honeycomb core substantially smaller than 10% in a pressing and conveying process.