Rotary Membrane Dispenser Cap With Offset Piercer
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing dispensers for powdered nutrients and concentrated cleaning products often require cumbersome mechanisms to mix with liquids, leading to degradation, environmental issues, and mechanical robustness problems, as they typically involve bending lever arms to pierce seals, which can deform and break.
Innovation Solution
A dispenser with a rotatable portion and a pierceable membrane that automatically dispenses material into a container when the consumer unscrews the cap, using a piercer offset from the axis of rotation to pierce the membrane during full rotation, ensuring the material stays fresh and maintaining potency until use.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a lever arm mechanism is used to pierce the seal, then the dispenser can pierce the membrane to dispense material, but the lever arm can deform and break, reducing reliability
Solution Approach 1:
The patent removes the complex lever arm mechanism entirely and replaces it with a simple piercer that is directly integrated into the rotatable portion. The piercer is a simple protruding structure that pierces the membrane through rotational motion alone, eliminating the need for separate lever arms and their associated deformation and breakage problems.
Solution Approach 2:
The rotatable portion itself performs the piercing function through its own rotational motion. As the consumer rotates the rotatable portion to access the material, the offset piercer automatically pierces the membrane during the rotation, making the system self-servicing without requiring additional mechanical components.
2Ease of operation
If the dispenser requires mixing mechanisms, then material can be dispensed and mixed with liquid, but the mixing process can cause degradation and environmental issues
Solution Approach 1:
The patent provides for separate storage compartments for different materials (e.g., powdered nutrients and liquid concentrates) that are kept separate until the moment of use. The consumer simply rotates the appropriate compartment to dispense the needed material, and mixing occurs only when actually needed, preventing premature degradation and reducing waste from unused mixed products.
3Reliability
If the piercer is positioned on the axis of rotation, then the rotation is symmetric and simple, but the piercer cannot effectively pierce the membrane from the outside of the storage compartment
Solution Approach 1:
The piercer is deliberately positioned asymmetrically, offset from the axis of rotation of the rotatable portion. This asymmetric positioning allows the piercer to extend through the wall of the storage compartment and effectively pierce the membrane from the outside during rotation, solving the piercing effectiveness problem while the rotational asymmetry is acceptable given the functional benefit.
Data Source
AI summary
A dispenser for dispensing material into a container has a base, which can be coupled to the container, and a rotatable portion that is mounted to the base and rotatable about an axis of rotation. The rotatable portion includes a storage compartment for storing the material. The storage compartment has a dispensing aperture of which at least a portion of the periphery extends in a direction non-perpendicular relative to the axis of rotation. The dispensing aperture is positioned such that the material stored in the storage compartment falls into the container when the dispensing aperture is uncovered. A pierceable membrane is sealed along the periphery of the dispensing aperture. A piercer, which forms part of the base, is offset from the axis of rotation and is positioned to pierce the membrane from the outside of the storage compartment during a full rotation of the rotatable portion.