Petal Mandrel Shaping Pleated Confectionery Wrapper
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional packaging methods for confectionery products, such as pralines, face challenges in ensuring a tight seal and aesthetic appeal when using a pleated cup wrapper, particularly for products with irregular shapes, leading to potential air pockets and a less appealing presentation.
Innovation Solution
A method and device that integrate the pleated cup into the packaging wrapper using two sheets of laminar material, where one sheet is shaped into a cup and sealed with a second sheet, and a petal mandrel is used to shape the wrapper into a pleated configuration, ensuring a tight seal and improved adhesion around the product.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the pleated cup is formed by shaping peripheral regions of sealed sheets, then the number of packaging operations is reduced, but air pockets may form and the aesthetic effect deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The method performs preliminary shaping of the first sheet into a cup-shaped configuration with a radial flange before sealing with the second sheet. This preliminary action allows the wrapper to be pre-formed to match the product contours, ensuring tight encasement while maintaining the integrated pleated cup structure, thus avoiding air pockets and aesthetic defects
Solution Approach 2:
The invention creates different structural qualities in different regions of the wrapper: the peripheral regions are shaped into pleated cup configurations with specific radial distances from the product surface, while the central regions maintain direct product contact. This local differentiation ensures both the aesthetic pleated appearance and the tight seal around the product base
2Reliability
If the peripheral regions are sealed together before final shaping, then hermetic packaging is achieved, but the wrapper may not tightly wrap irregularly shaped products
Solution Approach 1:
The shaping operation is performed after sealing but allows the pleated cup structure to dynamically adapt to the product shape. The peripheral regions are shaped to form a radial flange that can accommodate irregular product contours while maintaining the hermetic seal, as the shaping process molds the sealed wrapper around the actual product geometry rather than forcing a rigid pre-formed shape
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 ensures a leak-tight and aesthetically pleasing packaging that closely wraps the product, replicating the appearance of conventional hand-made packaging while reducing the number of packaging operations.
Implementation Method 1
shaping means which comprise a forming cavity able internally to receive the intermediate packaging and a male member, in the form of a punch, able to penetrate into the forming cavity in order to force the peripheral regions of the first and second sheets between the inner surface of the forming cavity and the outer surface of this male member
Implementation Method 2
these peripheral regions are preferably sealed together, for instance by adhesion with the application of filler material, heat sealing or ultrasonic sealing
Implementation Method 3
these peripheral regions are preferably sealed together, for instance by adhesion with the application of filler material, heat sealing or ultrasonic sealing
Implementation Method 4
these peripheral regions are preferably sealed together, for instance by adhesion with the application of filler material, heat sealing or ultrasonic sealing
Data Source
AI summary
A method and a device for packaging a confectionery product (P) in a shaped wrapper of sheet material (1, 2) having a cup-shaped portion (1c, 2c) (pleated cup) formed from the same sheet material as the product wrapper; the method and the device comprise the use or a mandrel with petals (14a, 14b) which cooperates with a forming cavity (11) and which may assume a retracted configuration so that it can penetrate into the forming cavity to shape the wrapper into a cup shape adhering to the product. The packaging is characterized in that the wrapper has a central region (2a) on which the product bears and from which the cup extends with a transverse dimension (or diameter) smaller than the maximum transverse dimension of the packaged product.