Glass bottles, including glass wine bottles, conventionally are molded in a two-stage operation in which a parison is molded from a hot glass gob at a blank or parison stage, and the container body is then molded from the parison at a mold or blow stage. The container neck finish is formed to final configuration at the blank stage, and the container body and neck are reformed at the mold stage. The two-stage manufacturing operation typically is either a press-and-blow operation in which the parison is formed by pressing the gob in the blank mold using a pressing plunger, or a blow-and-blow-operation in which the glass gob is blown to the configuration of the blank mold. The parison with completed neck finish it is transferred to the blow mold for final blowing, in which the intermediate or temporary body of the parison is blown into the final neck and body of the bottle. U.S. Pat. No. 4,362,544 includes a background discussion of the art of both press-and-blow and blow-and-blow glassware forming processes, and also discusses an electropneumatic forming machine adapted for use in either process. The disclosure of such patent is incorporated herein by reference.
Glass wine bottles typically are manufactured to receive either a cork-type plug closure or a Stelvin-type threaded closure. A Stelvin-type threaded closure typically has a metal shell with internal threads and a long skirt that can be tightly crimped to the container neck to simulate the foil that covers a cork. Change-over of a conventional glassware manufacturing machine from manufacturing bottles having one type of neck finish to manufacturing bottles having the other type of neck finish conventionally is a laborious process requiring change of both the neck rings at the blank stage for molding the neck finishes and the molds at the blow stage for molding the container bodies and necks. A general object of the present disclosure is to provide a method of molding glass wine bottles, and glass wine bottles made by such method, that simplify the process of change-over between Stelvin-type and cork-type wine bottles.
The present disclosure embodies a number of aspects that can be implemented separately from or in combination with each other.
The concept of the present disclosure, simply stated, is to provide a blow mold at the mold stage suitable for forming bottles having a neck (and body) configuration adapted for either Stelvin-type threaded closures or cork-type plug closures. Different neck ring molds are employed at the blank stage for molding the desired Stelvin-type or cork-type neck finish configuration, but the mold for the body and neck of the bottle remains the same at the mold stage. This greatly facilitates change-over of a production line between Stelvin-type and cork-type bottles.
A method of molding a wine bottle adapted for use with one but not both of a cork-type plug closure and a Stelvin-type threaded closure, in accordance with one aspect of the present disclosure, includes forming a glass parison having a temporary body and a completed neck finish contoured for receiving either a cork-type plug closure or a Stelvin-type threaded closure. The glass parison is transferred to a mold stage, an the temporary body of the parison is blow molded at the mold stage to form a glass bottle having a neck coupled to the neck finish. With both neck finish geometries, the neck adjacent to the neck finish has external (L and K) dimensions adapted to receive a Stelvin-type threaded closure and a cylindrical interior adapted to receive a cork-type plug closure.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds