Vacuum-Formed Tamper-Resistant Container With Buttressed Rim Walls
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Solution Overview
Problem
Vacuum formed containers are susceptible to deformation, allowing unauthorized access to their contents without breaking tamper-evident features, and additional manufacturing steps are often required to enhance security.
Innovation Solution
A vacuum formed container design featuring buttress features on the base rim to reinforce sides against deformation, combined with a tamper-evident mechanism using frangible attachments and pucker elements to indicate lid removal, without requiring extra manufacturing steps.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If vacuum formed containers use thin walls to maintain low cost, then manufacturing cost is reduced, but the container becomes susceptible to deformation allowing unauthorized access
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local reinforcement features (protrusions and recesses) at specific locations on the container walls where structural support is needed. These localized features increase strength and tamper resistance only where required, rather than thickening the entire container wall, thus maintaining low manufacturing costs while improving reliability at critical points.
2Reliability
If additional manufacturing steps are added to enhance security features, then tamper resistance is improved, but manufacturing complexity and cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates tamper-evident features (protrusions and recesses) directly into the vacuum forming process itself, rather than adding them as separate post-manufacturing steps. This merging of functions allows the container to gain enhanced tamper resistance without increasing manufacturing process complexity or requiring additional production steps.
3Volume of stationary object
If the container includes long sides to increase capacity, then storage volume is improved, but the sides become easier to deform and push inward creating gaps
Solution Approach 1:
The patent places reinforcement protrusions and recesses at specific intervals along the long sides of the container. These localized structural features provide support exactly where the long sides are most susceptible to deformation, preventing inward pushing and gap formation while maintaining the overall large storage volume capacity.
Data Source
AI summary
A vacuum formed, tamper resistant container resists deformation of the sides thereof that might otherwise permit access to contents of the container without removal of the lid. Downward protruding lid features reinforce the wall of the container base, and buttress features included in the rim of the base extend from a base flange diagonally downward and inward to the inner rim of a recessed shelf, thereby resisting downward rotation of the wall beneath the lid protruding features. In embodiments, attachment tabs surrounded by frangible boundaries are incorporated in the lid and attached to the base by living hinges, such that removal of the lid requires breaking of the frangible boundaries and detachment of the lid from the attachment tabs. Pucker elements associated with the attachment tabs can cause the attachment tabs to pivot away from the lid when the attachment tabs are detached from the lid.