Thermoforming Outside the Food Aisle

Most thermoforming discussion stays in food packaging, but the same forming principle serves electronics, hardware and industrial assembly — with a different set of requirements. An electronic tray is a handling device, not a display pack. It has to locate parts precisely, survive repeated stacking, and in many cases control static.

Shantou Longsheng Industry Co., Ltd. manufactures multi-station thermoforming machines in Shantou City, Guangdong Province. The company has been building plastic machinery since 1998 at a 30,000 square metre facility and holds 25 authorised patents.

The Trays in Demand

• Anti-static trays for circuit boards. Flat pocketed trays that hold PCBs at the edges, leaving the board surface untouched and preventing board-to-board contact.
• Chip component trays. Fine-cavity trays indexed to standard component pitches, used between assembly stations and in reflow handling.
• Hardware sorting trays. Multi-pocket trays that separate screws, fittings or small machined parts by size for kitting.
• Battery packaging inserts. Rigid cavity trays that immobilise cells during transport and prevent terminal contact.
• Tool positioning trays. Shadow-board style inserts that hold each tool in a fixed location for assembly discipline.

Why Forming Beats Fabrication

A fabricated tray is cut and bonded from sheet. A thermoformed tray is drawn in one piece, which means no joints to fail and no adhesive to outgas near sensitive components. Deep pocket arrays with tight dimensional repeatability are what the multi-station layout is designed for: heating is separate from forming, so pocket depth stays uniform from the first cavity to the last.

Static Control and Material Choice

Anti-static performance comes from the sheet specification rather than the machine. Conductive and dissipative compounds are processed on the same equipment, and the machine's role is to preserve those properties by keeping melt temperature controlled and avoiding contamination between runs.

For general industrial trays, HIPS and PVC offer stiffness and good forming definition at low cost. PET brings strength and dimensional stability; PP brings chemical resistance; PE suits parts that need a softer contact surface.

Longsheng supplies precision molds with its machines and provides installation guidance and operator training, which matters in electronics where a pocket that is 0.2 mm out of position rejects the whole tray.

For more information, visit the official website: https://www.stlongsheng.com