Monitoring the Quality of Paper Cups using IMC’s Vacuum Decay Testing Technology

Case Study #1: 12oz Single Poly Hot Cup:

Below is an example of a 12oz single poly hot cup:

The chart was generated by IMC’s Production Data software system. The production data system is included on all Semi-Automatic systems and is optional on all Bench Top test systems.

Each yellow dot on the chart above represents the decay value of a cup that has been tested.

This customer determined that a tolerance set point of 190 was a good reference set point for the cups he was making. As can be seen in the chart above, all of the decay values are lower than the set point tolerance represented by the blue horizontal line. Therefore, this is an indication that he is making good cups. Also notice that there is minimal deviation between decay test values which indicates a stabile forming process.

The above chart is for the same cup size but these cups were returned by his customer because of leaking cups. He liquid tested these cups but found very few actual leakers. We then tested these cups using the vacuum decay test system. As you can see above, most of the cups have much higher decay values than the cups that are charted in the first “Good” table above. Also, the data above shows higher deviations between cups indicating that the forming process was out of control.

From the above two charts of decay values, you can see good cup production in the first chart and an indication of poor-quality production in the lower chart. Also, it is important to note that our customer had difficulty determining that the returned cups where even bad when tested with liquid. However, the chart above clearly indicates that the return cups are of poor quality when compared to the good production that he is able to achieve as indicated in the first chart above.

If our customer had been using the decay tester at the time the bad cups where being produced – he would have had clear indication that there was a problem and he would have stopped production and solved the quality issue without sending his customer inferior cups – that subsequently were returned.

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IMC’s Vacuum Decay Test Systems