Decorating Plastic Cups at 1,200 Parts an Hour on the XD-360
Multicolor cup decoration at production volume — on a substrate that fights ink adhesion and a SKU mix that punishes single-format lines.
Application profile: a North American plastic cup and rigid-packaging converter producing decorated drinkware — flat-walled and tapered plastic cups — for the foodservice, branded-beverage, and promotional drinkware markets. Annual volumes run into the millions of units; the customer base is split between long branded runs and shorter promotional or private-label work that punishes a line built for one format.
Decorating plastic cups at production volume forces the converter to choose. Pad print delivers small images on complex 3D geometry but caps out long before food-and-beverage volumes. Screen print drives volume but limits color count and tools up slowly for each new image. Direct (dry) offset runs at speed but is engineered for very long runs of identical cups — the second the SKU mix gets short or variable, the changeover cost goes vertical.
The substrate adds constraint. Plastic cups are typically polypropylene or polystyrene — low-surface-energy materials with adhesion profiles that require ink chemistry engineered specifically for the substrate, plus a cure step that fixes each color before the next one lays down. Doing all of that — multicolor, multi-format, high-volume, low-changeover — is the cost-engineering problem the line has to solve.
The XD-360 — cylindrical-by-design single-pass inkjet that runs eight colors at production speed across the whole cylindrical envelope.
EPS engineered the XD-360 as a multicolor UV-LED high-resolution industrial inkjet platform built specifically for decorating cylindrical objects. The platform ships with five simultaneous print stations as the baseline configuration and scales to eight print stations and eight color channels in the same chassis — capacity is built in, not bolted on.
Each cup is loaded onto its own rotational mandrel and rotates under fixed printhead arrays in true single-pass production. Print and cure are synchronized — UV-LED banks pin each color the moment it is laid down, so the cup arrives at the next station with a fixed image, not a wet one. The configuration shown here uses eight production-grade single-pass printheads supported by four independent ink-management systems, and the line marks up to 1,200 parts per hour.
The XD-360 is platform-agnostic to the cylindrical substrate. Flat-walled cups, tapered cups, bottles, tumblers, drinkware, vials, aerosol containers, cosmetic bottles — anything cylindrical that fits the mandrel envelope is in scope on the same chassis. The same line that runs a foodservice cup run on Monday runs a cosmetic bottle order on Tuesday with a recipe swap, not a changeover.
XD-360 — Engineered for Curved-Wall Decoration
The XD-360 is purpose-built around cylindrical decoration, not a flat-bed platform with a mandrel bolted on. The geometry, the registration, and the cure path are all engineered for a rotating part under a fixed head array. Every constraint that flat-bed inkjet imposes on a cylindrical part is engineered out at the chassis level.
Eight-Station Ceiling — Same Chassis
Five simultaneous print stations are the production starting point. The chassis accepts up to eight print stations and eight color channels without re-architecting the line. Capacity is configured, not re-tooled — a four-color cup program scales to eight colors on the same equipment.
Multicolor UV-LED, Inline Cure
Multicolor UV-LED inkjet decoration at industrial resolution. Each color is pinned by an inline UV-LED bank before the cup advances to the next station. The offline drying step disappears; the inter-color WIP disappears; the part arrives at the next station with a fixed image, not a wet one.
One Cup, One Mandrel
Each cup is loaded once onto an individual rotational mandrel. From that moment on the cup is locked to the mandrel for the full decoration cycle — registration is established once and held until unload. The line never re-establishes registration at a downstream station because it never has to.
Continuous Cylindrical Print Path
Three cups indexed on three mandrels between stations. The cup rotates; the printhead array stays put; the image lays down continuously across the cup's curved wall in a single pass. There is no carriage indexing back and forth across a stationary part — that is what makes this production single-pass rather than fast multi-pass.
The Production Cycle in Motion
Close view of a cup mid-cycle on the XD-360. The continuous rotation under the fixed head array is the architecture decision that lets the line hit production-volume throughput on a multi-color cylindrical part. Multi-pass platforms cannot match it; pad and screen lines cannot match the color count.
Eight Stations, One HMI
The platform is operated from a recipe-driven HMI. The same line scales from a four-color baseline to eight print stations and eight color channels in the same chassis. A SKU change is a recipe change at the operator station, not a tooling change at the line.
What the XD-360 cylindrical cell delivers in production.
Up to 1,200 parts per hour in the production configuration
Eight printheads and four independent ink-management systems running synchronized print + cure. Production-grade throughput on a multi-color cylindrical part.
Five-to-eight color scalability in the same chassis
Capacity is configured, not re-tooled. A four-color cup program scales to eight colors at recipe swap — no new line, no new floor space.
Synchronized print and cure — no offline drying
No drying-rack footprint, no inter-color WIP, no inter-station handling event. UV-LED pins each color in-line; the cup arrives at the next station with a fixed image.
Single-load registration across the full cycle
Each cup is registered to its mandrel once and held there. The line never re-establishes registration downstream because it never has to.
Any cylindrical substrate, same chassis
Flat-walled cups, tapered cups, bottles, tumblers, drinkware, vials, aerosol containers, cosmetic bottles. Recipe change moves the line from one substrate to the next — no rebuild, no SKU-specific tooling.
Decorating cylindrical packaging at production volume?
Cups, bottles, tumblers, vials, aerosol containers — anything cylindrical that fits the mandrel envelope is the same problem to the XD-360: a curved wall that needs eight colors at production speed with cure inline. Tell us your substrate, your color count, and your annual volume; we'll show you the line.