Research Plastic Inc.

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There are several regular"”and costly, and troublesome"”problems that are daily taken for granted at many caulking manufacturing plants. These range from tubes not quite fitting the line correctly causing periodic downtime, to extra measures taken to prevent air from being packed with the product causing extra manufacturing time and effort, to product shipping with air in the tubes despite the efforts to keep it out causing customer complaints. Fortunately, rescue has arrived in the form of a new type of caulking tube which does not allow air to be packed with product. Such problems were a way of life for Flame Tech, Incorporated, a manufacturer of fire-retardant caulking products in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "The regular tubes caused a lot of problems," says Flame Tech president Jason Lynch. "We had to use a bleed wire with every tube, which made the machines not run as consistently. The machine part which pushes the plunger into the tube has to fit precisely. If you have a bleed wire on there, when the plunger inserter drops down and goes up against that wire and it doesn't fit precisely, it puts it off track. It can jam up the machine, and you have downtime." The tubes not quite fitting the machinery correctly was also a major problem. "The old tubes were more rigid, and it made it more difficult for them to fit the machinery," adds Lynch. The problems didn't stop once the tubes left the factory floor. "After the tubes were filled, we'd hear this "˜pop, pop, pop, pop' coming from them. Even though the tubes were shippable, there was air escaping from them." And once the tubes shipped, there were the customer complaints. "We got complaints from customers about how the caulk escaped from the old tubes when they opened them, and how it would continue to expel after they let their finger off the trigger." For Flame Tech and many others, the solution arrived in the form of a unique invention called the self-burping tube, invented and marketed by a Canadian company called Research Plastic. The majority of the problems encountered by Flame Tech and other caulking manufacturers trace back to trying to eliminate air from the tubes during manufacturing, or dealing with customer complaints about air in the tubes afterward. It is this exact problem that the self-burping tube solves. The tube's key innovation is a ribbing system on the inside of the bottom end of the tube which allows air to escape when the plunger is inserted during the caulking manufacturing process. Four vertical ribs, equally spaced and approximately 1.25 inches long protrude outward approximately ten thousands-of-an-inch, creating just enough of a gap between the side wall of the tube and the plunger to allow any trapped air to escape. Once the plunger has been inserted and the air has escaped, a tight seal is created. The tube has solved Flame Tech's previous problems. "We don't have to use the bleed wires any more, it's a lot smoother. There's way less downtime," says Lynch. "The tubes also fit our machinery much better."

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