Rich asks,
I have a customer who orders a lock bottom box with a tuck top from us. It ends up at distribution in Walmart and Walmart is having issues with the top flap coming open. It does not get taped closed. They are asking if we have packaging engineers that can provide documented test results or studies on performance changing it to a tuck top with a locking tab, or friction lock tuck top tab, or extending the tuck on the top tuck. Have you seen anything like that or are you aware of any hard documentation that says how much it changes the function of the top tuck? Thanks for your help with this.
I would start by checking with your sheet supplier and/or their containerboard provider to see if they have any information regarding the information you are looking for. Often integrated companies do these types of studies. Some will be willing to share and others are not as open to sharing their results. I have an associate in Canada that may want to weigh in on this issue. I’ll touch base with him and then update this post with any input he may have. I also searched through my George Maltenforts’ books, but found no discussions or reported research in this area.
However I do believe that a friction fit is the best way to go short of some type of press applied coating.
— Ralph
askralph 