FIELD OF THE INVENTION

A thermoformed container formed of a one-piece thermoplastic substrate.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Blow molded containers can be fabricated from flat substrates. One process employed to manufacture such containers is to form the flat substrate into a tube in which one of the edges of the flat substrate overlap with the opposing edge. The overlapping portion is bonded to formed a coherent tube. The tube can be fed into a blow mold. The blow mold is closed and pinches the bottom of the tube. A blowing cane is present at the top part of the tube. Heated air is forced into the tube to thermoform the tube into conformance with the blow mold. The blow mold is then opened and the blown container is removed.

In the above described process, the blow molded container will have a mold part line on the finished container that is evidence of the shape of the fit between the parts of the mold. Typically blow molds are structured to have two halves having flat faces that fit tightly together. In reality, it is difficult to provide faces of the mold that fit exactly together. Since the tube is blown into a container using high pressure, the container nearly exactly conforms to the shape of the mold, including any imprecisions along borders of the mold cavity where the mold parts meet.

The mold part line on blow molded containers is an artifact of the blow molding process. Mold part lines are apparent, upon careful inspection, on containers made by extrusion blow molding and injection blow molding. They typically can be found opposite one another on the container wall. Ordinarily the mold lines are of minor concern since they make up only a small portion of the container wall.

For containers made by converting a flat substrate into the container, there is a longitudinal overlapping seam that runs from the end seam on the bottom of the container formed by pinching the tube closed to at least the neck portion proximal the open end. The longitudinal seam can be visually apparent since it is a portion of the container that typically has a greater wall thickness than other portions of the container and the outer presenting edge can protrude above the adjacent material constituting the container wall. Further, such containers have mold part lines. So, there are at least three disruptions on the external surface of the container.

The multiple disruptions on the external surface of a container made by converting a flat substrate into a container leave only a few locations where the longitudinal overlapping seam and mold part lines will not interfere with the label applied to the container. For instance, it may be unsightly to have a label on the external surface of the container and have the longitudinal overlapping seam or mold part lines pass beneath and label and stick out above and or below the label. Further, if the label is directly printed on the external surface of the container, the mold part lines and longitudinal overlapping seam may be too rough to print upon or the roughness may degrade the quality of the printed image.

With these limitations in mind, there is a continuing unaddressed need for containers formed from flat substrates that can be suitably labeled.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

A container comprising: an open end; a closed end opposing the open end; a container wall extending longitudinally between the closed end and the open end about a longitudinal axis; an end seam extending at least partially across the closed end; a longitudinal overlapping seam extending from the end seam, a portion of the overlapping seam extending from the end seam and longitudinally along the container wall; and a mold part line extending from the closed end to the open end; wherein the open end is narrower than at least a portion of the container away from the open end of the container; wherein the closed end and the container wall consist of a one-piece thermoplastic substrate; wherein the container has a height extending between the open end and the closed end, wherein the overlapping seam along the container wall has an overlap magnitude at a location that is about 10% of the height away from the closed end; and wherein at a location that is about 10% of the height away from the closed end the mold part line and the overlapping seam are within a distance of one another of less than about five times the overlap magnitude.

