Cylindrical plastic packaging — drinkware, beverage bottles, cosmetic bottles, aerosol cans, pharma vials — is one of the largest decoration segments in packaging. Conventional lines specialize: screen for volume on one cup format, direct offset for very long runs of identical cups, pad for short-run 3D parts. EPS engineers the XD-360 cylindrical single-pass inkjet line that absorbs the whole envelope on one chassis. Five-station baseline, eight-station ceiling, up to 1,200 parts per hour.
Cylindrical plastic packaging is a family of decoration jobs that look identical to the line: a curved wall that needs multi-color decoration at production speed with cure inline. The substrate spread is large — polypropylene cups, polystyrene drinkware, PET beverage bottles, HDPE cosmetic bottles, aluminum-or-plastic aerosol containers, polypropylene vials — but the decoration problem reduces to the same architectural pattern across all of them.
EPS engineers that pattern as the XD-360 single-pass cylindrical inkjet platform. Each part is loaded onto its own rotational mandrel and rotates under fixed printhead arrays. Five simultaneous print stations are the baseline configuration; the chassis scales to eight print stations and eight color channels without re-architecting the line. UV-LED cure pins each color the moment it is laid down. The cup or bottle or vial arrives at the next station with a fixed image, not a wet one — and the SKU change from cup to vial is a recipe swap, not a tooling change.
Different substrates, different end-markets, same single-pass cylindrical cell.
Flat-walled and tapered plastic cups for QSR programs, branded-beverage launches, and promotional drinkware. Polypropylene and polystyrene substrates. Long branded runs and shorter promotional SKUs running on the same line.
PET water bottles, sports-drink bottles, juice bottles, dairy and shelf-stable beverage formats. Direct cylindrical inkjet decoration with full brand graphics — no label, no shrink sleeve, no secondary application step.
Cylindrical cosmetic bottles, skincare bottles, haircare bottles, fragrance bottles. Brand-grade photographic decoration with expanded gamut for cosmetic pantones. Multi-SKU brand families with rapid graphic refresh cycles.
Pill bottles, narrow-neck pharma vials, dropper bottles, OTC packaging. Single-pass decoration with variable data for lot codes, serialization, and UDI markings — production-speed compliance.
Aerosol cans, cleaning-product cylinders, industrial-products cylindrical packaging. Direct decoration on plastic and aluminum-or-laminated cylindrical envelopes — replaces labels and pre-print decoration steps.
EPS deployed an XD-360 single-pass cylindrical inkjet line for a North American plastic cup converter producing decorated drinkware for foodservice, branded-beverage, and promotional markets. The configuration runs eight production-grade printheads with four independent ink-management systems — five simultaneous print stations baseline with capacity to scale to eight. Long branded runs and shorter promotional SKUs run on the same line; SKU change is a recipe swap at the HMI, not a tooling change at the chassis.
Real customer cells — full process walkthroughs.
A plastic cup converter runs multi-SKU drinkware on one XD-360 single-pass cylindrical inkjet line. Five-to-eight color stations, synchronized UV-LED cure, recipe-driven SKU changeover. The same chassis handles bottles, vials, and aerosols.
Pick the cell that matches your substrate, your color count, and your run length.
The platform. Cylindrical-by-design single-pass inkjet for cups, bottles, vials, aerosols, drinkware. Five simultaneous print stations baseline, scales to eight in the same chassis. Each part rotates on its own mandrel under fixed head arrays.
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For narrow-format cylindrical containers — beverage bottles, narrow vials, cosmetic tubes — BottleJet handles direct cylindrical inkjet with full 360° wrap. Lower throughput than XD-360 but right-sized for narrow-geometry programs.
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For lower-volume cylindrical programs where pad-print economics still beat single-pass — short-run multi-color decoration on niche cylindrical packaging and specialty containers.
Explore Pad Printing →What cylindrical-by-design architecture delivers that adapted platforms cannot.
Geometry, registration, and cure path engineered around a rotating part under a fixed head array. The architecture decision is upstream of every spec on the sheet.
Each part loaded once onto its mandrel and held there for the full cycle. Registration established once at load, not re-established at every downstream station.
UV-LED bank pins each color the moment it is laid down. No offline drying step, no inter-color WIP, no drying-rack footprint. The part arrives at the next station with a fixed image.
Five print stations baseline, eight-station ceiling — same frame, same envelope. A four-color cup program scales to eight colors at recipe swap rather than at line rebuild.
Tell us your substrate, your color count, your annual volume, and your SKU profile. We'll show you whether the XD-360, BottleJet, or KP08 pad is the right tier — and where cylindrical-by-design single-pass economics flip the math against screen and direct offset.