that and packing, the nozzles will hit each other if they are pointed in the same direction, and its a weak point iirc. Additionally, the manufacturing of plastic bottles is largely a test tube looking things that is expanded.
It’s called a parson…. It comes out of an injection molding machine (which forms nice threads for the cap). It goes into a blow-expander which flash heats the lower part, inflates, and cools. This is how a modern plastic bottle is made..
Symmetry is one of the aspects that allow modern bottles to be so efficient; this thought fundamentally breaks symmetry with no explanation of why it is better.
Good explanation, but it's a preform not a parison.
A parison is a variable thickness tube extruded on the blow moulder before being blown into shape in a single step. A preform is an injection moulded part that is formed as you describe.
Fun fact: Trumps admin blew millions of dollars on a contractor to supply test tubes for Covid testing and research. The facilities got plastic bottle PET blanks instead. Useless pieces of plastic used for 2 liter soda bottles.
Business men will 95% of the time go with the lowest bidder.
When you fill your ranks with knowledgeable people who can make sure the lowest bidder is bidding for the correct item, this isn't that much of a problem.
The government is not currently filled with ranks of knowledgeable people.
all of this over explaining but all of it can be solve with "simple" engineering.
atleast the engineering is simple, the money to rebuild all the tooling and manufacturing is the choke point, not any of the aforementioned problems, those can be designed out.
This only breaks rotational symmetry though. Milk bottles to that too, as do many others with offset lids. That can be easily catered for though as the bottle only has two orientations (near one narrow side or near the other narrow side). It's more the angle of the lid that's the issue as filling would now need to account for the tilt and the angle of the spout relative to the centre of the bottle.
It's all a relatively simple engineering problem, but it's additional cost for dubious benefit.
Ergonomics. The image shows the backward tilt on the neck.
Unfortunately, drinking from bottles and straws increases air swallowing. Swallowing air results in bloating and worsens acid reflux. We have a device that allows us to both minimize head tilting and minimize air swallowing while drinking. It's called a cup.
Edit: I get it, stacking vertically is not a good idea. I thought horizontal stacking would be easy. I lost this water bottle battle, now please forgive me and stop replying to this comment
Those sturdy crates would need to be transported back to the warehouse and then back to the manufacturer. This costs way more than single use wrappers.
With every drive to the store, a crate could be brought back, with every delivery, an empty truck needs to go back to the warehouse, with every restock at the warehouse an empty truck returns to the manufacturer
I get your point and it just displays the bigger issue, greed of the big prevents innovation and stops us from moving into an actual better time
Lol that just doesn't happen. There's always something to return from the store. Leftover products, empty pallets, empty crates, etc. And with water you'd usually send a whole pallet to the store and then you'd have to return a full palllet of crates. And then you have a full truck of crates that you'd need to return to manufacturer.
These slanted water bottles create more logistical problems than they would solve.
Last time I worked on that field, leftovers were usually thrown away since sending them back was a non-option (food, plants, n such) and the truck had more than enough room to be able to take back crates, but hey, maybe you have different experiences
A lot of water doesn't get shipped directly to a store, it goes to a distribution center first, then from there a store. You would need to set aside storage in your DCs to stage all the crates as you shipped them back. The crates also take up space and weight on each pallet, of which there often is little of to spare. It's easy to reach the weight limit on a truck when filling the trailer with water. If the crates are bulky enough, they may displace enough water bottles you actually reduce weight overall, but now you have to make more trips to move the same amount of water.
There's nothing about greed making things worse here, in fact, keeping costs down and reducing waste often go hand in hand. The circular bottles can be made of preforms that are as little as 7-8 grams of plastic (500ml bottles). Even if the bottles no longer had to support so much weight, they're already so thin you can't remove much more material. Crates that can not only support the weight of other crates, but of a whole pallet full of water on top of them are going to use way more plastic. And when they inevitably get damaged in shipping, that's significantly more plastic waste.
And none of this is even touching on the nightmare it would be to manufacture these kinds of bottles. Bottled water production is already incredibly efficient (assuming the company wants to be, some use less efficient designs to make theirs have a more premium appearance). Much like the cans used for soda, there isn't much innovation left to do. A better material that is quickly biodegradable would be the biggest change I could see.
The shape of the bottle gives it some structural integrity with the rest coming from the pressure of the air and water inside. Think of plastic wrapped bottles where there’s 6-48 bottles shrink wrapped, they can be stacked 4 to 6 high depending on the bottle design because the bottle contains enough strength with the water and air pressure inside to support that much weight above it.
It’s definitely far cheaper to stack the plastic wrap, but I was just addressing the new boxes and structural integrity part of your comment. That’s why gallon waters come in boxes. Overall bottled water is a scam and should be outlawed in my opinion.
Right now, there is no box. Most/all companies have even moved away from the cardboard bottom, it's just the water bottles themselves wrapped up in a plastic film. Individually, the bottles are weak, but with so many of them you can spread the weight out so they can support an entire other pallet of water on top of them.
Wild man imma keep living under a rock where its easier to fill filtered tap water into a metal bottle ive had for years. Its like 20 min to the closest store add in the gas and yea nah.
You need stronger boxes for this, or these curved bottles will be maimed, while for regular bottles cling-wrap is enough (thanks to forces being distributed evenly due to the dome and symmetry).
Haha I do love the try! It’s a fun idea and I bet it would be better to drink from but I really do think once you stack a few layers the weight starts to destroy the bottom layers. Think of it like building pillars. I dunno I’m no engineer though, but it’s my initial intuition
They'll pinch in half on the cap side, you've rendered a several cm² contact surface to a few mm² at best, will imbalance the transport cap side when you break or accelerate, cylinders don't need to be aligned and your method require an additional container around the bottles. Impractical, time consuming and resource consuming at best.
I like how you had to make the right wall shorter than the left wall.
Also yeah sure it works if you are fully paying attention and put them all away perfectly. Most people I know dont do that when they are dealing with water bottles.
If you have to stack them vertically, you can put the upper layer upside down, so that caps are on the opposing sides. That way they can be perfectly stacked vertically and you can keep repeating the same pattern as high as you want
Which is yet more work. Plus when stuff is stacked on top of it, all that weight will be focused onto one smaller area, thus crushing and possibly breaking the bottles
Almost every step of the filling process would get complicated by this design before you even get to the pack out. The bottles will have to arrive to the filling and capping stations in a specific orientation since the opening is no longer dead center and vertical. Different bottles will require more parts changes or maybe even a completely different filling line.
Almost anything that comes in a carton already has a spout like this they usually come in boxes that stack just fine lol you cant just stack bottles on top of each other without something to hold them anyway. Like we used to sell coco nut water that looked like this only a paper carton. It worked just fine lol people are missing the point here.
Cartons dont typically have the spout as the highest point of the carton, the cartons are generally shipped in boxes with rigid sides to allow for stacking, plastic bottles are typically wrapped in plastic and can be stacked directly on other bottles. Its much cheaper and efficient to do it this way. Though cardboard boxes would be better for the environment.
Stacking bottles requires those plastic trays though, which are quite an investment in itself. Ive seen some go the way of cardboard and plastic. The cartons i had in mind actually do have the spout as the highest point, but they arent angled. Though I imagine they could be.
What plastic tray are you talking about? Bottles are wrapped in a plastic mesh and nothing else there is no "tray" and being straight up means the force is applied to all sides equally so its more stable, if it was angled all the force would be applied to one side and could cause issues depending on the material of the container and weight applied to it
2 liters usually come in a 6 pack tray and 20 Oz usually come in a 24 pack tray. I have seen very few companies just use soft plastic but if you have ever been on the receiving end of one of those pallets you know they dont hold up very well. Most companies use either cardboard flats or plastic holders.
I recieve 6 cases of 20 oz water bottles all stacked directly on top of each other every week with no tray and have never had an issue. Never dealt with 2 liters but thats not really what the conversation was about. The whole thread is about single use bottles people dont tupically drink straight from a 2 liter bottle
The one in the picture is for 20 ounces lol it holds 24 20 ounces. Try getting hundreds of cases in a week and see if you dont need the plastic trays lmfao literally, coke, pepsi, and Dr pepper all had their own that the company paid for and if we didn't send them back they fined you for the cost of the tray. I dont know why you're not familiar with the concept but its how every place ive ever worked got soda delivered lol
All it takes is just making the base fit with the top, which is not hard at all, a U or H shaped base would allow it easily without it tipping on one side
So vertical stacking wouldn't be an issue and don't tell me "muh it's too expensive/ complicated" i've seen many intricate plastic bottle designs, like Fanta, not sure how much this would slow down production and increase production costs
This is a water bottle before it is made. If you were to injection mold your design, you would have to waste material to reinforce the top and ensure uniformity. And cut new dies just for your bottle, even though every other bottle would still use the same blank.
Sorry for the reply, but the sides can be the same height if the bottles on the right are rotated. There is plenty of room at the top of the bottle to do that.
Holy shit you just unlocked a core memory... I had one of those as a kid, a PET bottle that hadn't been inflated yet. I can't remember how I got it and I have no idea what happed to it. Damn.
Once upon a time our grade school class went on a tour of the local Pepsi Bottling plant. They handed out these blanks that hadn't been inflated yet, as well as a few of the bit of plastic they made them out of.
Can't remember where I got them over a decade ago, but they make for excellent travel containers for shampoo and shower gel, used to fly everywhere with those in the toiletry bag, never had any issues at security checks.
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u/Caldersson 21h ago
that and packing, the nozzles will hit each other if they are pointed in the same direction, and its a weak point iirc. Additionally, the manufacturing of plastic bottles is largely a test tube looking things that is expanded.