FUNERAL TRAY

Abstract

The funeral tray can have an elongated bottom and an upwardly projecting wall peripheral to the bottom and leading to a raised rim, defining a concave shape sized and configured to receive the body of a deceased person, the upwardly projecting wall and the bottom being integral to one another and made of bio-based material.

Claims

1. A funeral tray having an elongated bottom and an upwardly projecting wall peripheral to the bottom and leading to a raised rim, defining a concave shape sized and configured to receive a body of a deceased person, the upwardly projecting wall and the bottom being integral to one another, made a single. unibody part and made of particleboard, including wood fibers and a resin molded using a press, and configured support the body of the deceased person when carried.

2. (canceled)

3. The funeral tray of claim 1 wherein the bottom has a portion comprised of a sheet having a uniform thickness and shaped with a plurality of grooves.

4. The funeral tray of claim 3 wherein the plurality of grooves include a plurality of grooves oriented parallel to a length of the elongated bottom.

5. The funeral tray of claim 3 wherein the plurality of grooves include a plurality of grooves oriented perpendicular to a length of the elongated bottom.

6. The funeral tray of claim 3 wherein the sheet bends upwardly at the periphery of the bottom and extends to form the upwardly projecting wall.

7. The funeral tray of claim 1 wherein the upwardly projecting wall includes longitudinal wall portions parallel to a length of the elongated bottom, on opposite sides of the elongated bottom.

8. The funeral tray of claim 7 wherein two interspaced handles are formed in each one of the longitudinal wall portions.

9. The funeral tray of claim 7 wherein the upwardly projecting wall includes transversal wall portions perpendicular to a length of the elongated bottom, at the opposite ends of the elongated bottom.

10. The funeral tray of claim 9 wherein two interspaced handles are formed in each one of the transversal wall portions.

11. The funeral tray of claim 9 wherein the bottom has a plurality of grooves oriented parallel to the length of the elongated bottom and located adjacent the longitudinal wall portions, and a plurality of grooves oriented perpendicular to the length of the elongated bottom and located adjacent the transversal wall portions.

12. The funeral tray of claim 11 wherein the bottom has a central portion including a plurality of grooves oriented transversal to the length of the elongated bottom and extending alternatingly from one of the longitudinal grooves located on one side of the bottom towards another one of the longitudinal grooves located on the other side of the bottom, and vice-versa, along the length of the bottom.

13. The funeral tray of claim 1 wherein the upwardly-projecting wall extends obliquely outwardly from the bottom, in a stackable configuration.

14. The funeral tray of claim 13 further comprising a plurality of stops interspaced around the periphery of the bottom, the stops configured to maintain a gap between the bottoms of superposed trays.

15. The funeral tray of claim 1 provided in combination with a cover, the cover being made of folded cardboard.

16. The funeral tray of claim 15 wherein cover includes two halves, each half covering a corresponding longitudinal portion of the tray.

17. The funeral tray of claim 15 wherein the cover is engaged with the tray via a tongue and slot arrangement.

18. The funeral tray of claim 1 further comprising a mattress laid against the bottom, within the upwardly projecting wall, and a pillow laid onto the mattress at one end of the bottom.

19. The funeral tray of claim 1 wherein the particleboard is an engineered wood product having roughly 9/10.sup.th in weight of wood chips generally in the 0.5-1.5 millimeter length range, and roughly 1/10.sup.th in weight of a suitable resin.

20. The funeral tray of claim 1, wherein the bottom has a portion shaped with a plurality of grooves oriented perpendicular to a length of the elongated bottom, at least one of the grooves extending continuously between opposite ends of the elongated bottom.

21. The funeral tray of claim 1, wherein the particleboard has a thickness of between ⅛″ and 2/8″ after being press-moulded.

22. The funeral tray of claim 21, wherein the particleboard has a thickness of around 0.2 inches.

23. The funeral tray of claim 19, wherein the funeral tray weighs about 25 pounds and configured to carry the body of the deceased person having a weight up to 600 pounds.

24. The funeral tray of claim 1, wherein the particleboard is a low-density fiberboard.

Description

DESCRIPTION OF THE FIGURES

[0010] In the figures,

[0011] FIGS. 1A and 1B are oblique views of a casket including a funeral tray, bedding, and a cover, in FIG. 1A, one half of the cover is removed for exposure;

[0012] FIG. 2A is a partial top plan view of the funeral tray of FIG. 1;

[0013] FIG. 2B is a cross-sectional view taken along lines 2B-2B of FIG. 2A;

[0014] FIG. 2C is a cross-sectional view similar to FIG. 2B, schematizing the stacking of identical funeral trays;

[0015] FIG. 3 is a top plan view of the funeral tray with arrows schematizing air circulation along the grooves;

[0016] FIG. 4 is an oblique view showing a stack of funeral trays; and

[0017] FIGS. 5A and 5B are oblique views showing a mould used to manufacture the funeral tray of FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0018] FIGS. 1A and 1B show an example of casket 10 comprised of a funeral tray 12, bedding 14 including a mattress, a pillow and linens, and a cover 16. A deceased person can be laid down onto the bedding in a natural position. The cover 16 is comprised of two halves. In FIG. 1A, a first cover half is assembled to a first longitudinal half of the funeral tray 12, which can cover the legs of the deceased person while leaving the upper body exposed, for viewing, for instance. In FIG. 1B, a second cover half is assembled to a second longitudinal half of the tray 12 to entirely cover the deceased person. The configuration of FIG. 1B can be used when carrying the deceased person, for instance.

[0019] The funeral tray 12 can be sold or used alone, or otherwise independently from associated articles.

[0020] FIGS. 2A and 2B show the funeral tray 12 alone, in greater detail. The funeral tray 12 can generally be provided with an elongated bottom 20 (best viewed in its whole in FIG. 3) and an upwardly projecting wall 22 peripheral to the bottom 20. The peripheral wall 22 leads to a raised rim. The funeral tray generally has a concave shape sized and configured to receive the body of a deceased person, and can have roughly 2 feet in width and 6.5 feet in length, for instance. The wall in this embodiment has a height of roughly 3 inches and is continuous, but can be discontinuous in alternate embodiments.

[0021] The tray 12 can be made of a single moulded part of bio-based material, and can thus be said to have a unibody, or to be monohull. More specifically, in this embodiment, the tray is made of a single press-moulded fiberboard component. In one example, the press-moulded fiberboard component can consist mainly of wood fibers, which can be in the 5-15 mm length range in general, and bonded with a suitable resin forming a minor portion of the material. The tray can be entirely formed in one press-moulding step, the wall and the body thus forming a single part. Alternate embodiments can be made of other types of fiberboards.

[0022] The tray 12 is made of a sheet-like material which, although having a somewhat uniform thickness determined by the distance between the male and female portions of the mould (see FIGS. 5A and 5B), is embossed and shaped by the press to form a relatively complex shape. In this manner, the peripheral wall 22 can be integral to the bottom 20. More specifically, the sheet-like material can be said to bend upwardly between the bottom 20 and the peripheral wall 22. An integral, shaped, sheet-like material with a concave shape can be resistant to leakage of fluids which could become present in the tray.

[0023] The peripheral wall 22 can include two longitudinal wall portions, one on each side of the bottom, parallel to the length of the tray 12, and two transversal wall portions, one on each end of the bottom, transversal to the length of the tray 12. The wall portions can be designed to give the impression that the deceased person is comfortably nested within the concave shape. The wall portions can extend upwardly, and thus act somewhat as the flanges of an I-beam and provide a significant amount of rigidity to the tray. Rigidity can be desired if the tray is designed to carry the deceased person. To this latter end, the tray can further be provided with integrated handles, and in the illustrated embodiments, two handles are 24 provided in each one of the wall portions, positioned and interspaced from one another to allow to naturally and easily carry the funeral tray. The handles in the front and rear wall portions can help pulling the casket out of a hearse, for instance.

[0024] In this specific embodiment, the sheet like material of the tray is further provided with a plurality of grooves 26 in the bottom 20. The grooves can be designed to play one or both of the two following roles, for instance: 1) provide additional rigidity for a limited amount of extra weight and 2) provide fluid circulation passages under the tray, which can help reduce incineration time when the tray is used as a cremation tray. As shown in FIGSS. 2A and 2B, in this embodiment, a number of elongated grooves were provided alongside both longitudinal wall portions and alongside both transversal wall portions, and were found to effectively increase the resistance of the walls. Additional grooves can be provided, and in particular, in this embodiment, a peripheral groove circumscribes a central portion of the bottom, alternating left-side to right-side oriented grooves 28 were provided which project transversally from corresponding longitudinal portions of the peripheral groove, along the length of the central portion of the bottom, and additional longitudinal grooves 30 are provided between the central portion and transversal grooves at each longitudinal end of the tray. The air circulation paths formed by such a groove configuration are schematized by arrows at FIG. 3.

[0025] Indeed, in the embodiment illustrated a combination of elongated grooves parallel to the lateral edges to impede lengthwise bending, elongated grooves parallel and adjacent to the transversal edges to impede transversal bending, and transversal grooves in the center section, between the elongated grooves which are parallel to the lateral edges, can further impede transversal bending.

[0026] In the illustrated embodiment, the upwardly-projecting wall extends obliquely outwardly from the bottom, and is designed in a manner to allow identical trays to be stacked on top of one another into a configuration such as shown in FIG. 4. Stackability can reduce costs associated with shipping or storage, for instance. The bottom of the tray is thus narrower than its raised rim. To avoid jamming of the trays into one another due to the cumulative weight of the stacked trays, stop features can be included in the design of the tray, which can be used to maintain a spacing between the bottoms of superposed trays and prevent over-insertion of stacked trays. In this embodiment, a plurality of stops 32 are formed in the tray, in the form of thicker portions positioned at the intersection between the bottom and wall, interspaced from one another around the periphery of the bottom. More specifically, in this example, the stops 32 are incorporated into the handle design. When the trays are stacked, the stops stack on top of one another and essentially form corresponding columns forming a structure which holds the stacked trays in a practical manner.

[0027] Indeed, in one embodiment, the tray is stackable with identical trays. This can reduce costs as it can allow to address shipping volume. To this end, the trays can be provided with a stackable shape, which can include the lateral and end walls being outwardly oblique relative to the bottom, with the inner wall surface of a first tray being adapted to receive the outer wall surface of an other tray received into the first. To avoid a scenario where the weight of the stack of trays results in the jamming of two or more lowermost trays into one another, stop features can be incorporated into the moulded shape of the trays, preferably a plurality interspaced around the edges/walls perimeter, in a manner that the stop features prevent a tray stacked immediately above the first from reaching the bottom wall. When the trays are identical, the stop features become stacked on top of one another and structurally form a number of columns which supports the weight of the tray stack while maintaining a gap between the bottoms of adjacent trays in the stack.

[0028] In addition to the choice of the shape and the thickness of the sheet-like moulded material, the choice of the type of fiberboard can also affect the weight to rigidity ratio. In this context, rigidity can help limit deformation of the tray due to the weight of the deceased person when the deceased person is carried with the tray, for instance. In one example illustrated herein, a medium density fiberboard material tray was pressed from a mixture of roughly 89-91% wood fibers in the form of wood chips most of which having a length between 5 and 10 mm, or 5 and 15 mm for instance, and varying widths, 8-10% resin, small quantities of wax and salt, pressed with a 900 T press, achieving a pressure in the order of 1000 psi during pressing, with a total weight of about 25 pounds, to achieve a thickness of the pressed/embossed sheet-like material of between ⅛″ and 2/8″, preferably around 0.2 inches. Such an embodiment, having the groove configuration shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, was tested and found to satisfactorily resist deformation when carrying weight of up to 600 lbs. It was found that using a greater thickness with the same material and press, could lead to a weight capacity of up to 1000 lbs for a weight of 32 lbs, but the lower weight of the 600 lbs capacity configuration was preferred in a context where 600 lbs capacity at the trade-off of about 25 lbs weight was found satisfactory for most applications.

[0029] In the embodiment illustrated, the fiberboard body of the funeral tray, including the bottom and the walls, was press moulded using a mould shown in FIGS. 5A and 5B. The mould can be mounted to a press. In this embodiment, it was found relevant to use a bottom mould formed of a central portion and of two separable end portions, one of which is shown in FIG. 5B, whereas the upper mould was provided as a single component.

[0030] In this embodiment, the fiberboard body in unapertured except for slots 34 which were conveniently positioned here in corresponding ones of the handles, and which are configured to receive corresponding tabs of the cover. The cover halves can be made of cardboard and folded from corresponding blanks. In alternate embodiments, different tongue and slot arrangements can be used to secure the cover to the funeral tray, or the separable cover, if used, can be secured to the funeral tray in a variety of alternate ways.

[0031] As can be understood, the examples described above and illustrated are intended to be exemplary only. The scope is indicated by the appended claims.