TAP FOR FOOD VESSELS WITH INTEGRAL WARRANTY SEAL

The present invention refers to a tap for food vessels.

Such tap will protect vessels containing therein foodstuff, for example dry foodstuff (mainly ready-made spices and flavours, useful for food use, which can be congealed or frozen, such as minced parsley, minced garlic, etc.), but also any other type of food, such as for example liquid and/or solid foods .

Arrangements are known nowadays which comprise vessel + tap, such as for example those manufactured by companies Daregal, Tetrapak, etc. Commonly, such arrangement is composed of a vessel which, once filled in with the product which will have to be marketed, is closed and frozen (or surgealed) . Upon securing the tap onto the box, after filling and closing the box, glue is laid (commonly on four points, but sometimes it can happen, for example with Tetrapak taps, that the whole tap surface is used for gluing) , and afterward the tap, without any real warranty seal or direct protection thereon (on the box there is a sort of seal, with scarce strength, to be broken once having opened the plastic tap before using it) , is oriented and placed on the vessel itself.

Under this condition, the tap sometimes detachs itself, since glue (especially under low temperature like in products to be refrigerated) crystallises and therefore loses its efficiency.

Moreover, the tap area used for gluing, > which is a plated lower part thereof, in some cases and with particular geometries, is almost never perfectly plane. In this case, gluing becomes difficult, since, due to the scarce planarity of the plastic piece, the gluing area decreases, increasing the previously described problem of glue crystallisation. Moreover, it is necessary to remember that, in order to favour gluing a piece of polyethylene or polypropylene on cardboard, it is necessary to "treat" the cardboard itself (at least on the surface where glue will be deposited) with a thin layer of PE/PP (PolyEthylene/PolyPropylene) in order to favour gluing, increasing the cost of cardboard and therefore of all tap- vessel system. Moreover, it is never easy to glue PE/PP against another PE/PP.

Moreover, it is necessary to take into account that the various steps of closing the vessel, laying glue and orienting and laying the piece, highly increase the costs for the tap laying machine, in addition to the arrangement with vessel plus tap itself.

Still more, the fact of not having the warranty that the tap remains stable over the vessel could greatly damage the

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vessel manufacturer together with a high economic damage (possible lack of compliance of the manufactured package) .

Moreover, the vessel, usually made of cardboard, with the prior art tap must be realised by using a great amount of cardboard, increasing its production cost.

Finally, in cases in which there is a sort of cardboard seal, there is the problem that the consumer is scarcely prompted to remove such seal, which is difficult to access and scarcely practical.

Object of the present invention is solving the above prior art problems, by providing a tap for vessels (preferably a plastic tap for cardboard vessels) which exploits the restraining between vessel cardboard and internal tap geometries; in this way, all problems given by glue and gluing a piece of plastic onto a cardboard are removed.

A further object of the present invention is providing a tap as described above, which is further manufactured in a single piece, with integral warranty seal, preferably of the tearing type, in order to do without the seal on the cardboard, which provides practical problems for the user.

A further object of the present invention is providing a tap as mentioned above, which further allows saving material (cardboard) for manufacturing the vessel, since four small edges obtained on the upper side of the vessel itself are enough, since the inventive tap exploits their resiliency,

together with the resiliency of geometries created on the tap, to obtain a correct insertion and locking of the tap onto the vessel. In fact, the high cardboard force is exploited, which has a cutting force, which makes highly stable and immovable the tap onto the vessel even under extreme conditions (of the freezing or surgealing type) .

Finally, in order to solve the problem that the tap closing cover frees itself from the tap body and gets restrained onto the vibrator being present on the machine for inserting the tap onto the vessel, stopping the tap inserting cycle, a closing cover locking system onto the tap has been created, which is much more accurate and safe, and which guarantees the tap to remain with its cover closed even if subjected to vibrations of the tap supplying vibrator, which preferably provides an interference system between two small circular profiles being present on tap and cover, which, when closing, mutually cooperate; it is however possible to create numerous arrangements, similar to the shown one, which guarantee a perfect anchorage of the two parts, preventing their accidental opening.

The above and other objects and advantages of the invention, as will appear from the following description, are obtained by a tap for food vessels as claimed in claim 1. Preferred embodiments and non-trivial variations of the present invention are the subject matter of the dependent

claims.

The present invention will be better described by some preferred embodiments thereof, provided as a non-limiting example, with reference to the enclosed drawings, in which:

- Figure 1 is a bottom perspective view of an embodiment of the tap according to the present invention in its opening position;

- Figure 2 is a top perspective view of an embodiment of the tap according to the present invention in its closing position;

- Figure 3 is a top perspective view of an embodiment of the tap according to the present invention in its closing position;

- Figure 4 is a perspective view of a vessel to which the tap of the invention can be applied;

- Figure 5 is a side sectional view of an embodiment of the tap of the invention coupled with a corresponding vessel;

- Figure 6 is a detailed view of the coupling area between tap and vessel in Fig. 5;

- Figure 7 is a top view of Fig. 2; and

- Figure 8 is a side view of the tap of Fig. 2.

With reference to the Figures, an embodiment of the tap 1 of the invention is described, in a form thereof adapted to be applied to a vessel of the box type, substantially of the parallelepiped type. For such purpose, the tap 1 is obviously

shaped with a body with square shape, but it is as well obvious that the tap 1 of the invention can be made of any shape which allows it to be coupled with vessels of any shape and size.

With reference to the Figures, the inventive tap 1 is adapted to be used with a vessel 3 for foods in order to cover the vessel 3 through which foods are delivered. The tap 1 substantially comprises a support body 5 equipped with at lest one delivering opening 7 for foods and with opening and closing means 9 of such delivering opening 7, hinged in 6 to the support body 5.

To guarantee an optimum seal with the vessel 3, the support body 5 is further equipped with means 11, 12, 13 for the unmovable restraining connection to the vessel 3 itself.

In particular, but not in a limiting way, such connecting means 11, 12, 13 are composed of at least one abutment projection 11 adapted to engage the wall 14 of the vessel 3 from inside the vessel 3 itself, of at least one abutment wing 12 for the wall 14 from outside the vessel 3, and of at least one tooth 13 adapted to engage the wall 14 from outside the vessel 3. Function of the abutment projection 11 is avoiding that the vessel 3 wall deflects and therefore, once having inserted the tap 1 onto the vessel 3, the bent wall 14 can be overturned and go out of its engagement with the tap 1, such engagement being guaranteed by locking the end 14' of the

vessel 3 with wing 12 and tooth ^' 13.

In order to guarantee the best seal with vessel 3, the at least one tooth 13 is adapted to engage the open end 14' of the wall 14 which is bent onto itself towards outside the vessel 3, as can be well seen from the Figures.

Moreover, the body 5 of the tap 1 is equipped with seal means 16, 16' placed between body 5 and opening/closing means 9 in order to close the opening 7 and prevent the access inside the vessel 3, after having opened the opening/closing means 9 till the seal means 16, 16' have been removed.

In an innovative way, the seal means 16, 16' are made in a single piece with the body 5 of the tap 1.

Moreover, the seal means 16, 16' are equipped with a weakening area 17 adapted to make it easier to remove the seal means 16, 16' from the tap 1 when a removal force is exerted onto the seal means 16, 16' . When the seal means 16, 16' are instead not extracted, such weakening area 17 is sealingly reinforced with a corresponding reinforcing rib 20, which will be better described below.

For such reason, in fact, the inventive tap 1 is further equipped with such reinforcing rib 20 placed inside the body 5, in which this rib 20 is adapted to reinforce the tap 1 seal onto the vessel 3 and also to support the tearing force of the seal means 16, 16' by abutting against the cylindrical projection 18.

In the preferred but not limiting embodiment shown, the seal means 16, 16' are composed of a tearable ring 16 connected to a closing wall 16' adapted to be removed from the opening 7 when seal means 16, 16' are removed from the tap 1.

Moreover, the ring-type seal means 16, 16' are contained inside a cylindrical projection 18 internal to the body 5, which cylindrical projection 18 performs, in addition to the function of protecting the seal means 16, 16' , also a function against the disengagement of the opening/closing means 9, as will be described below.

In fact, the opening/closing means 9 are in turn equipped with a cylindrical projection 22 adapted to be coupled with the cylindrical projection 18 of the body 3 in order to prevent the undesired opening of the opening/closing means 9.

Still more, the opening/closing means 9 are equipped with at least one catching wing 30 for opening and/or closing them.

And finally, as shown in the Figures, when the vessel 3 is shaped as a parallelepiped, the body 3 of the tap 1 must be of a square shape, each one of the four sides of the body 3 being equipped with connecting means 11, 12, 13 and a reinforcing rib 20, as shown. Other different shapes of the tap 1, for connecting to corresponding vessels with different shapes, are obviously clear for a skilled person in the art, and fall within the scope of the invention, as pointed out by the following claims.