Segmented Blister Packaging With Sealing Sheet
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing packaging solutions for pharmaceutical and tobacco products face challenges in providing child-resistant and elder-friendly designs while ensuring environmental protection and product integrity, often resulting in complex and costly packaging that is difficult to configure and manage.
Innovation Solution
A package design comprising a first shell portion, a second shell portion, and a latch system with an integral hinge, featuring a clamshell structure with marginal sealing surfaces and a sealing sheet that can be weakened to allow individual compartments to be opened without exposing the entire product, ensuring child resistance and ease of use for older adults.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a seal is provided for the entire contents of the package to ensure environmental protection, then product protection from humidity is improved, but the package design becomes constrained in terms of dimension, shape and other design parameters
Solution Approach 1:
The package is divided into multiple individual compartments or blisters, each with its own seal, rather than a single seal for the entire package. This segmentation allows each compartment to be opened independently while maintaining protection for remaining compartments, reducing overall design constraints.
Solution Approach 2:
The sealing mechanism transitions from a peripheral seal around the entire package to individual seals integrated within the package structure at the blister level. This dimensional shift from package-level to component-level sealing provides greater design flexibility.
2Ease of operation
If the entire product is exposed when the package is opened, then consumer convenience is improved, but the remaining product becomes exposed to the environment and children
Solution Approach 1:
The package contains multiple separate compartments or blisters that can be opened independently. When one compartment is opened, other compartments remain sealed and protected, allowing consumers to access only the needed portion while keeping the rest secure from children and environment.
Solution Approach 2:
Individual compartment seals act as intermediaries between the consumer and the product, allowing selective access. The sealed blisters serve as a protective intermediary layer that can be breached one at a time, maintaining protection for unused portions.
3Reliability
If a protective envelope or wrapper is used to protect the product, then environmental protection is improved, but the entire product is exposed when the wrapper is opened
Solution Approach 1:
The protective function and the packaging structure are merged into a single integrated unit. The blisters serve both as protective enclosures and as the packaging format itself, eliminating the need for separate protective envelopes or wrappers and simplifying the overall packaging structure.
Solution Approach 2:
The blister compartments serve multiple functions simultaneously: they protect individual products from the environment, organize multiple products within a single package, enable selective access, and provide a child-resistant sealing mechanism. This multi-functionality reduces the need for additional packaging components.
Data Source
AI summary
A package comprises a latch including first and second legs and an actuating portion. The first and second legs are joined at an angle. The actuator portion of the first leg is positioned to be displaced generally laterally to displace the second leg generally longitudinally to release the latch. In another embodiment the package has base wells on the inside surface. A generally flat marginal sealing surface encircles the first and second base wells. The wells of the base and/or lid are covered with a cover sheet to close them. Still another embodiment is a child-resistant container comprising a shell, two drawers, a stop, and a latch. The drawers are prevented from sliding apart past a limit of travel when one drawer is open sufficiently to provide access to its contents and the other drawer is not.