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The guy who made it so difficult to open your bag of potato chips
- TamDenholm 14y agoI love learning about things I would never come across in everyday life, like how a packing machine works and the problems no one would ever think to think of like air pressure and altitudes. Then also the restrictions put in place and how to come up with a creative solution to a problem. This is the kind of stuff I live for.
- nickpinkston 14y agoCheck out this playlist of manufacturing processes - pretty cool: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3AFB507B668AF162 http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3AFB507B668AF162
- minikomi 14y agoI think my love of these kinds of videos started with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMU-wXsgyR8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMU-wXsgyR8
- ahelwer 14y agoThe air pressure certainly has an effect. I live in an only somewhat-high-altitude city (Calgary) and most of the chip bags you see are puffed up like balloons.
- graywh 14y agoOnce had a bag of chips burst while driving up into the Rockies.
- mcpherrinm 14y agoI think the most interesting part of this post was the comment about how they use multiple scales with chips to get closest to the desired value. This is really a neat hack that probably allows for much less precise chip dumpers. I'm reminded of how awesome randomized algorithms in CS can seem, but in real life it is just extra magical.
- excuse-me 14y agoMore a case of discrete chip mass. You could have very accurate chip scales, load cells are cheap and very accurate - but how do you select exact 'N' grams of random sized potato chips? Having a set of pans, where the first has eg. 17chips with a mass of 4.5g, the next has 19chips with a mass of 5.9g etc and then selecting from 4 of them them to hit the 20g bag size is very clever.
- hammock 14y agoExactly. It allows for less-precise (i.e. more variability) chip size, not chip scales. :) Simplifying the scenario might clarify what's happening. Imagine any given chip could weigh 1-2oz. And you are trying to fill a 2oz (minimum guaranteed content) bag. You already have 1 chip in the bag, weighing 1oz. The next chip you add (think "marginal" from econ class) weighs anywhere from 1-2oz and could tip the scale all the way up to 3oz, when you are only looking for 2oz in the bag. But if you use two scales, you have now a choice of TWO chips to put in the bag, so you pick the one that weighs closest to 1oz. And ultimately this allows you to fill more 2oz bags with the same quantity of chips.
- arocks 14y agoTrue. Straightforward application of the Knapsack problem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem
- leot 14y agoSeems like a good design would be to have seals that are extra-weak to shear forces while being strong for all the other kinds.
- scott_w 14y agoOne type of seal I see has a nick in the side. It's still sealed, but the nick gives you something to leverage, so you can tear the packet open. Perhaps this isn't as common in the US?
- leot 14y agoIt is, though it doesn't always work, and it's easy to tear a sub-optimal opening.
- jff 14y agoI see them over here all the time... you'll find them on jerky packets, for example, or as the initial seal on nearly any re-sealable bag (think of a bag of cereal with a zipper on top). The problem is that if the Seal God (blessed be his flippers) doesn't smile on you, you'll end up ripping off a sliver of the top of the bag and completely failing to get a decent opening. This has caused much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I think the material used for the bag/packaging is definitely a factor--I can pretty much always make a good tear on a ramen flavor packet, but I don't know that I've ever had a bag of jerky open properly. God, all this talk of cereal and jerky and ramen makes it sound like I eat only crap. I eat vegetables, I swear!
- reneherse 14y agoThe nick you're describing creates what structural engineers call a 'stress riser' in the material of the bag. It focuses the force you exert on the bag to a small point, from which the tear will originate. Stress risers are a common cause of structural failure, and are usually designed around. Some well known examples where they cause failures: rectangular window openings in aluminum fuselages, knots in fishing line, a poorly designed head tube lug on a steel bicycle frame. In this case, however, the failure of the material results in a good outcome: snack time.
- 14y ago
- ChuckMcM 14y agoAt 4:10 in this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqBbr7Ewsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqBbr7Ewsw you can see a VFFS machine in action. (I find 'how its made' to be musak for nerds but that is a different post :-)
- calloc 14y agoI've been watching "How It's Made" on NetFlix, I am on Season 3 and it is awesome. Although, I do tend to get hungry for the foods they show :P
- philwelch 14y agoReally? That show always turns me off of eating processed foods. If I watched it every day I'd go paleo for sure.
- calloc 14y agoI'm on Aderall, and by the time I watch the show its effect has worn off (watching it RIGHT before I go to sleep, the guys voice makes me go to sleep), making me slightly hungry, but not enough to get out of bed and actually make any food, besides I don't like eating right before I go to sleep. Yes, there is a lot of food that is on there where I can find myself saying "well, definitely not eating that ever again".
- sciurus 14y agoYou can link directly to 4:10 in the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqBbr7Ewsw&t=4m10s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkqBbr7Ewsw&t=4m10s
- bmelton 14y agoHoly shit that's brilliant. I admittedly haven't been to Youtube in forever, but that actually got me to click, if only to find out how (other than altering the querystring by hand) you did it. I still didn't see how to do it though. Is that a logged-in option perhaps or am I just missing something?
- carguy1983 14y agoso when trucks would drive their chips out to California, some of the seals would open up due to the pressure difference between the high altitude air and the air sealed inside the bag This is backwards, isn't it? Less dense air from Colorado would shrink the bag in California.
- Dove 14y agoYeah, it is. Your shampoo usually opens on the pass. At a guess, maybe he meant the plants were east of the mountains, not west, so they would have to drive over them?
- carguy1983 14y agoOh, right, the mountains :)
- Mz 14y agoI think it depends where in Colorado they started and where they went after. I walked and hitched my way cross country this year. I did not go through Colorado but went up and down in altitude quite a lot. I was up around 7000 feet at least three times in states I never thought of as all that mountainous. And Cali has mountains, some of them quite high.
- Laremere 14y agoI'm guessing he was saying that while the chips were in transport of the passes into California, the low pressure at the high altitudes combined with the higher pressure in the chip bags would cause the bags to break open. They'd be back at normal pressure at the destination however. I also think he meant East of the Rockies as to where they were made, considering West of the Rockies is California.
- johnpowell 14y agoNow I know who Kettle Chips hired to make their impossible to open bags.
- MartinCron 14y agoI was just thinking about how Kettle Chips have a small but pronounced notch that you can grab and pull. I haven't had any angst opening a bag of chips in a long time.
- unconed 14y agoAnd here i was, cursing the idiot at kettle who thought eating chips from the side of the bag was a good idea. Opening from the top allows for easy reach and easy reseal.
- nknight 14y agoWell, you're doing it wrong. From the perspective of a right-hander: Hold the bag upright with the notch on the left, use your left hand to grasp the upper-left corner, while using your right thumb and index finger to begin tearing downward. As soon as you break into the actual cavity, begin tearing rightward. Invert appropriately for a left-hander. Or just do what I do and keep a pocket knife around. Shrug
- PakG1 14y agoThis post you made is just begging you to read The Design of Everyday Things. :) I'm going through it right now, amazing book. Highly recommended.
- unconed 14y agoSo they replaced an easy and obvious way with one that requires careful coordination. And still ruins the bag for reseal. No thanks. Like the other guy said, "design of everyday things".
- 14y ago
- hammock 14y agoOK now let's find the guy that invented those crinkly Sun Chips bags.
- K2h 14y agoagreed - and then lets ask them about the total fabrication that they are biodegradable.
- Jimmie 14y agoBiodegradable... eventually. edit: So I looked it up and it should only take 14 weeks in an active compost pile. I wonder if anyone has ever tested it?
- dbarlett 14y agoAlmost no change after 25 weeks in a home compost pile: http://cockeyed.com/science/compost_chips/sunchips.php http://cockeyed.com/science/compost_chips/sunchips.php
- Jimmie 14y agoInteresting. I'm skeptical of the marketing because 14 weeks doesn't seem like long enough. I'm also skeptical of this experiment though. Sunchips specifies 14 weeks in a hot and active compost. A new compost pile (like in the experiment) would not be very active compared to an old one, especially since he didn't add any worms to it but he did get the water and turning right. He also mentions that it was cold and rainy in the weeks after he started his compost. An old compost would shrug this off but it would have a negative effect on a newly started compost.
- wizard_2 14y agoA friend of mine teaches gardening to children and they tried it. After 4 months the bag was a bit thinner and worn but not drastically different. They figured that in a large communal compost it might only take 14 weeks to biodegrade as communal composts are considerably hotter then anything you could have at home.
- K2h 14y agoI'm usually pretty disappointed, because on a failed opening attempt I end up crushing those chips, and then feel like I didn't really get my money's worth.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoIt's alright. Chips and cereal are sold by weight, not volume. Some settling (or crushing) of contents may have occurred during shipping and extraction.
- K2h 14y agoI realize they are sold by weight, but I'll be honest, the full size merchandise is worth more to me. It is even worse on cereal, my wife saves the end of the box for me because i'll eat it. I prefer the full size, but throwing out the 'fluff' (crushed bits and powder at the end) seems like a waste.
- glimcat 14y ago"The point here is that while technical options exist to prevent premature opening of the bag, such as reducing the initial air pressure in the bag, attempting to add this to the existing processing equipment would be a nightmare. So it was necessary to increase the seal strength." You could also reduce the air pressure in the factory, e.g. by building it in one of the aforementioned high-altitude regions.
- reneherse 14y agoTrue, however there would be a trade off with chip cooking times, no? If water boils at a much lower temperature at high altitude, then I assume oil would as well. But then again, you could cook your chips in pressurized vessels a la Kentucky Fried Chicken. But you'd still have to truck all your potatoes up into the mountains. Decisions, decisions...
- Arelius 14y agoBuilding an entire new set of factories in a mountain region where there are, generally speaking, fewer residents to staff your factory is a pretty expensive decision.
- ww520 14y agoAnd/or heat up the air filling the bag. As air cools, the volume decreases. The right solution would be to squeeze to depress the bag a bit as it's sealed. Increasing the seal strength is a quick and dirty hack, but as we've all learned too well from software, the right solutions often got trumped by quick and dirty hacks. The customers just have to live with the consequence.
- jbri 14y agoYour ideas have other suboptimal consequences though - sucked-in bags don't look as nice on the shelf, and in fact they look smaller. This makes them less attractive and thus less likely to be purchased.
- chc 14y agoThat would be even more expensive than upgrading a bunch of equipment. The whole point is that the solution had to be retrofit onto existing facilities at minimal cost.
- georgemcbay 14y agoThe guy we really need to find and punish is the one who invented "rigid plastic clamshells". The kind that "conveniently" transforms from product packaging into a razor-sharp weapon while you are trying to open it.
- AncientPC 14y agoClamshell packaging was made for retail shelves. To prevent shrinkage and increase product visibility, it was designed to be transparent while simultaneously difficult to open. The explosion of Amazon and other online retailers made the advantages of clamshell packaging moot. However if you are a manufacturer, it may not be economically feasible to produce two different types of packaging for different retailers so lowest common denominator wins out. Amazon has tried to combat clamshell packaging[1] with a few manufacturers (Fisher-Price, Mattel, Microsoft), but it has yet to be adopted by the rest of the manufacturing industry. [1]: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/amazoncom-cuts-packaging-to-combat-wrap-rage/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/03/amazoncom-cuts-pack...
- rdtsc 14y ago> To prevent shrinkage and increase product visibility, Which is also a feature to discourage shoplifting.
- juiceandjuice 14y agoShrinkage is shoplifting.
- MattGrommes 14y agoI believe shrinkage is most commonly used by retailers to mean theft by employees. Shoplifting is customer theft.
- sparky 14y agoShrinkage encompasses all of the above [1]. The retailer I worked at for a few years (::shudder::) used this definition. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkage_(accounting) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrinkage_(accounting)
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago> Other options besides a stronger seal are technically possible, but not economically feasible. It would have cost next to nothing to attach slabs of foam rubber or gentle spring plates to the sealer. As the two sides move together, the air is gently squeezed out of the bag first. Sheer incompetence.
- lbo 14y agoI'm not sure if I exactly understand your solution. Would you be lightly squishing the contents of the bag with the spring plates while sealing the front? It also seems possible that manufacturers wouldn't want chip bags to look comparatively "deflated" when sold in a same-pressure environment (and thus stand out less on the shelf compared to competitors'). Also, maybe bags rupture for reasons other than pressure change and thus a stronger seal is still desirable. Just guesses, though I know the article didn't make mention of any of those reasons.
- oasisbob 14y agoWouldn't evacuating the air from the packaging make the chips inside the container crush and break easier? It's always been my understanding that the head room inside the package helps protect the contents.
- Arelius 14y agoBut it's not until the chips settle that this will be effective, unless you are ok with crushing chips to get the air out.
- batista 14y agoAnd who said they wanted to squeeze the air out --and have the deflated look, easy crushing and all? When one talks about the "sheer incompetence" of a group of industry experts set to find a solution to a problem in an internet comment thread, while putting out an inane "solution" of his own that doesn't take all facts into account --and when he never knew all the constraints in the first place--, well, the Dunning–Kruger effect springs to mind...
- gtani 14y agoWhen i started skiing, I used to have bags of chips explode on me while driving from the California coast to Lake Tahoe, scared the crap out of me. I just decided to buy vacuum packed stuff up there.
- biot 14y agoI find this article to be quite frustrating. It's like reading about how some process was too slow, so they looked at the variables which include a faster processor, more RAM, and larger storage. Ultimately, they chose more RAM and developed a new algorithm and all was solved. But then they never tell you what the algorithm is. Or why it allowed them to keep within the constraints of the same processor and storage. In this case, it's a new adhesive. But how was that developed? What makes the new adhesive better suited to high-pressure applications while keeping the temperature and time constant? Inquiring geeks want to know!
- masterponomo 14y agoNot so difficult if you keep one pinkie nail 3 inches long and razor-sharp (as do I).