The cup no longer travels alone

Inflight catering is an unusual packaging market. The cup travels inside a meal tray cavity designed years earlier, stacked in a cart of fixed height, and sealed with a lid the airline already stocks. A supplier that changes cup weight by a gram or rim diameter by 0.2 mm can upset the loading pattern. Shantou Longsheng Industry Co., Ltd. produces airline cups in the 4 oz to 9 oz range on its FS-8556, HSS-8556 and HAI-8556 platforms, with the dimensional discipline this market needs.

The four numbers airlines check

• Rim diameter and flatness — the lid is heat-sealed or snap-fitted, and a wavy rim leaks in turbulence
• Gram weight — tied to fuel cost and cart weight limits
• Stack height — a 200-cup sleeve must fit the cart column, so cups nest to a controlled depth
• Base diameter — must match the tray recess, or cups tip during service

Why thermoforming tolerances drift

Three causes dominate: sheet thickness variation, cavity-to-cavity mold temperature imbalance, and worn trim tooling. A multi-cavity mold running two degrees apart between cavities produces cups that stack at different depths, and sleeve height starts to vary batch by batch. Our molds use per-cavity cooling and are checked against a stack height standard before shipment, not just against single-part dimensions.

Lightweighting without losing stiffness

Airlines keep asking for lighter cups. Removing material from the base is the wrong place, because it kills stacking rigidity. The right place is the sidewall between the reinforcing ribs. On the DSI-PP multi-layer co-extrusion line we hold a thin, consistent core with a controlled skin, giving a lighter cup that still passes a top-load stack test.

Production and logistics

• Cup machines: FS-8556 full servo for fast format changes, HSS-8556 hydraulic servo for stable clamping, HAI-8556 for long single-format runs
• Molds: cavity counts from 1 to 32 depending on output and shrink behaviour
• Support: spare parts stocking advice so a new format starts up without a long shutdown

About Shantou Longsheng

Established in 1998 in Shantou, Guangdong Province, China. 30,000 m² factory, trademark "Longsheng", 25 granted patents (1 invention, 24 utility models), high-tech enterprise. We build sheet extruders, multi-station thermoformers, vacuum forming machines, cup making machines and precision molds for PP, PS, HIPS, PVC, PET, PLA, PE and biodegradable materials.

More at https://www.stlongsheng.com