The Procter Gamble Company

Donald L Gerth

John Joseph Curro

Delmar R Muckenfuhs

William I Mullane, Jr

James C Baird

E Kelly Linman

William H Goodman, Jr

George M Vernon

A resilient three-dimensional plastic web exhibiting reduced skin contact area and a fiber-like appearance and tactile impression. The web has a multiplicity of apertures therein, each being defined by a multiplicity of intersecting fiber-like elements interconnected to one another in the plane of a first surface of the web. Each of the fiber-like elements exhibits a substantially uniform generally upwardly concave-shaped cross-section along its length. The cross-section comprises a pair of convergent substantially linear portions which intersect one another at an end to form a vertex in the plane of the first surface of the web. This vertex reduces the skin contact area of the web providing a more comfortable feel for the user when the web is employed as a wearer contacting topsheet on an absorbent article. Furthermore, the web provides a substantially non-glossy visible surface as there is almost no substantially planar portion in its uppermost surface to reflect incident light to the viewer's eye. The pattern of intersecting vertices in the first surface of the web substantially eliminates pooling of fluid on the first surface of the web, since there is almost no substantially planar portion on which fluid may pool. This further contributes to the web's clean and dry appearance in use as well as more rapid fluid transport into the underlying absorbent element.

Resilient plastic web exhibiting reduced skin contact area and enhanced

A method for applying a high pressure liquid jet or stream to a web of polymeric film while the film is supported on a moving forming structure to produce a novel microbubbled substantially fluid-impervious web exhibiting substantially the same consumer preferred soft and silky tactile impression and reduced noise generation levels heretofore only achievable in microapertured, and hence substantially fluid pervious polymeric webs. In a particularly preferred embodiment, the microbubbled polymeric web exhibits a fine-scale pattern of discrete mushroom shaped surface aberrations, each of said surface aberrations having its amplitude oriented substantially perpendicular to the surface in which the surface aberration originates. Apparatus for producing microbubbled webs either in 'planar' or 'macroscopically expanded' form are also disclosed.

Method and apparatus for making substantially fluid-impervious

A medicament dosing device capable of administering a vaporized medicament in the form of tiny aerosol particles to the mouth and lungs of the user at a substantially constant concentration level. In a particularly preferred embodiment the dosing device is used to provide nicotine to a cigarette smoker in a form and a dose that closely mimics a burning cigarette to satisfy the smoker's craving for nicotine, but without subjecting either the user or any non-users in the immediate vicinity to the tars and carbon monoxide of cigarette smoke. A preferred device comprises a battery powered resistance heater housed in a cigarette-shaped tube. A demand-operated switch is employed in the circuit so that as the user sucks air through the tube in a manner similar to puffing on a cigarette, energy is supplied to the resistance heater which vaporizes the nicotine. Because the system vaporizes the medicament being administered only upon activation of the demand-operated switch, the concentration of the medicament will be substantially constant each time the user sucks on the mouthpiece end of the cigarette-shaped tube, regardless of the length of the time intervals which pass between successive inhalations.

Dosing device to provide vaporized medicament to the lungs as a fine

A continuous, multi-phase process for debossing and perforating a substantially continuous web of substantially planar polymeric film to coincide with the image of one or more forming structures, each having a patterned forming surface with a multiplicity of holes and an opposed surface. Each forming structure is open from the holes in the forming surface to its opposed surface. The web of film has an indefinite length, a first surface, a second surface and a thickness. The thickness comprises the distance between the first surface and the second surface. The process comprises at least two sequential forming phases, one of which involves three-dimensional conformance of the web to the macroscopic profile of the forming structure and another of which involves aperturing of the web to coincide with fine-scale apertures in either the same or a separate forming structure. The order in which the phases are carried out will depend upon the properties desired in the resultant macroscopically expanded, three-dimensional, apertured polymeric web. Because the process is carried out in sequential phases, previously incompatible characteristics which could not be provided by prior art single-phase forming processes can now be achieved.

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Cincinnati, OH, United States of America

Donald L Gerth