How Are Paper Cups Manufactured?
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Printing
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Paper arrives in a cup factory on large rolls. One side of the paper roll is covered with a plastic or wax backing that will eventually become the inside of the cups. These paper rolls are fed into a large machine that prints selected designs on the non-coated side of the paper. After the paper has been printed, the machine cuts apart the designs on the paper to make small sheets known as "flats." Each flat will become a cup. Flats vary in size, depending on the size of the cups being made.
Forming
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After the flats have been stacked, they are fed into one end of a large machine. This machine rolls the flats into a cylinder and seals them by heating up the wax coating on the inside of the paper cups. At the same time, a roll of paper is fed into the other end of the same machine and circles are cut out of the paper to form the bottoms of the cups. The strip of paper left over after the cup bottoms have been cut is sent out for recycling. The machine brings the cup bottoms and cylinders together and heat-seals them to each other.
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Rimming and Packaging
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The cups are sent through a chute to another machine that rolls the paper at the top of the cups. This creates a rim on each cup. The cups are then sent through a vacuum tube to the packaging department, where they're dropped into tubes that stack them. Once the desired number of cups is in a stack, the stack is sent through a machine that wraps plastic around it and then seals the plastic. The package of cups is then ready to be packed and shipped. The entire process of making and packaging cups takes about one minute.
Testing
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Leaks are very rare. However, cups are randomly pulled off of the production line and checked. The cups that are pulled for testing are set into a special holder above a mirror. The mirror allows the person performing the test to see the bottoms of the cups and make sure they're not leaking. If a leak is found, production on a particular line is stopped until the problem can be found and corrected.
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Resources
- Photo Credit Dan Bluestein
