Interlocking Plastic Bottle with C-Shaped Handle
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional plastic milk bottles face challenges in cost reduction, stackability, and ergonomic design while maintaining a center pour opening for user comfort, and require additional packaging materials like slip sheets that can become wet and lose strength.
Innovation Solution
A one-piece, blow-molded plastic bottle with non-planar sidewalls and a C-shaped ergonomic handle that interlocks adjacent bottles, eliminating the need for slip sheets and allowing for efficient stacking and reduced shipping costs, featuring a breakaway tamper-evident cap and enlarged surfaces for information display.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional plastic milk bottles are designed with a center pour opening for user comfort and adaptability to traditional fillers, then ease of operation and manufacturing are improved, but the bottles cannot interlock during stacking and require additional packaging materials like slip sheets
Solution Approach 1:
The bottle is divided into distinct functional zones: the center pour opening maintains traditional functionality for easy pouring, while the sidewalls are segmented into convex and concave regions that enable interlocking during stacking. This segmentation allows different parts of the bottle to serve different purposes without compromising either pouring comfort or stacking stability.
Solution Approach 2:
The convex and concave regions on the sidewalls create a nested interlocking configuration where adjacent bottles fit together like puzzle pieces. The convex region of one bottle fits into the concave region of an adjacent bottle, creating a stable stacked arrangement without requiring external packaging materials.
2Loss of substance
If bottles are designed to interlock during stacking to eliminate slip sheets, then shipping costs and packaging materials are reduced, but the bottle design becomes more complex with non-planar sidewalls
Solution Approach 1:
The sidewalls feature curved convex and concave regions rather than flat planar surfaces. These curved geometries enable the bottles to interlock smoothly during stacking, eliminating the need for slip sheets while maintaining a relatively simple overall bottle design that can be manufactured using conventional blow-molding techniques.
3Ease of operation
If a C-shaped ergonomic handle is added to the bottle, then ease of operation and user comfort are improved, but the bottle weight and complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The handle is merged with the bottle body as an integrated component rather than a separate attachment. The handle forms part of the blow-molded structure, combining the functions of the bottle and handle into a single unitary design that reduces overall weight and complexity compared to separate components.
Solution Approach 2:
The handle is positioned and shaped to provide ergonomic benefits specifically at the gripping area, while the rest of the bottle maintains its optimized structure for stacking and pouring. This localized approach ensures ergonomic comfort without unnecessarily increasing the weight of the entire bottle.
4Productivity
If bottles are stacked without slip sheets to reduce costs, then shipping efficiency is improved, but stability and strength of the stacked array may be compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The convex and concave regions on the sidewalls create an asymmetric interlocking configuration that provides inherent stability to the stacked array. This asymmetric design ensures that bottles naturally align and lock together during stacking, maintaining stability without requiring additional packaging materials like slip sheets.
Data Source
AI summary
A container for fluid product includes a one piece body having first, second, third, and fourth sidewalls, an upper surface and a lower surface. Two of the sidewalls have non-linear, parallel conformations that each include a convex surface portion that merges into an adjacent concave surface portion for abutting engagement between adjacent containers and limit sliding movement of the abutting stacked containers. The upper and lower surfaces have a center pour opening and a recessed region, respectively, which cooperate to limit sliding movement of adjacent stacked containers relative to one another. A handle cylindrical portion is dimensioned to conform to a generally C-shape contour formed by a user's thumb and index finger.