BUILDING A BETTER PET BOTTLE
Create an invention that improves PET plastic bottles and methods for their manufacture. Plastic beverage bottles are very widely used. For many beverages - water and carbonated sodas - the bottle constitutes a sizeable fraction of the total cost of goods for the finished product.
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is the most commonly used plastic for producing beverage bottles. The bottles are made in a two-stage process: injection molding of PET resin into a mold to form a tube-shaped preform, and then blow molding of the preform into the completed plastic bottle.
Improvements are desired that a) use a one-stage process of directly going from PET resin to finished plastic bottle without having to go through a preform step; and/or b) produce a bottle having reduced overall weight while still retaining sufficient barrier and containment properties.
Keywords: PET, polyethylene terephthalate, blow molding, injection molding, low density, light weighting.