From technological breakthroughs to market breakthroughs: Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery’s plastic cup edge rolling machine Rewrites the industry ecosystem

1,200 perfect plastic cup curling edges per minute! Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery has overcome industry pain points with its four-axis three-channel technology, reducing mold changing time from 2 hours to 30 seconds at a cost of only 60% of imported equipment, and helping over 80 small and medium-sized enterprises achieve intelligent upgrades.

In the R&D workshop of Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery, that high-speed automatic mold adjustment and plastic cup edge rolling machine is setting a new industry record every minute – 1,200 perfectly rolled plastic cups are orderly output from the precise structure of four axes and three channels. This domestic first-of-a-kind equipment, which embodies the team’s three years of hard work, is quietly rewriting the competitive landscape of the food packaging industry.

At first, I received a request for help from a milk tea cup manufacturing company. They said that every time they changed the mold, they would have to stop work for two hours, and during the peak season, they simply couldn’t keep up with the orders. The R&D director of Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery recalled. It is precisely the common pain points in this industry that have become the starting point for research and development. Traditional plastic cup edge rolling machines mostly adopt single-shaft or double-shaft designs. During high-speed operation, they are prone to “deviation”, and mold adjustment is entirely dependent on manual screwing, with precision relying solely on experience. The team decided to break away from the traditional framework and introduce the four-axis linkage technology into the field of plastic cup processing.

The development of the four-axis architecture has not been smooth sailing. Just to keep the four axes synchronized at high speed, we conducted 107 experiments. Technicians disclosed that by optimizing the gear meshing accuracy and installing real-time monitoring sensors, a positioning error of 0.02 millimeters was ultimately achieved, which means that the flatness of the cup mouth after curling has reached a rare high standard in the industry. The breakthrough in the three-channel design stems from the reconfiguration of the production line process – processing the feeding, flanging, and discharging processes in parallel, combined with an intelligent diversion system, ensuring that the speed increase no longer comes at the expense of stability.

The birth of automatic mold adjustment technology can be regarded as a “blessing for the lazy”. After visiting over 30 small and medium-sized processing factories, the R&D team found that 60% of the enterprises were reluctant to accept orders of multiple specifications due to the complexity of mold adjustment. For this reason, they have developed an intelligent control system equipped with an industrial-grade display screen, compressing over 20 traditional mold adjustment steps into “one-click operation”. “Changing specifications now is even simpler than switching apps on your phone.” ” The owner of a dessert cup factory in Guangzhou smiled and demonstrated the operation: Input the cup mouth diameter of 58mm and the temperature of 180℃. After 30 seconds, the equipment automatically completed the mold calibration. The entire process does not require the presence of professional technicians.

The “inclusiveness” of this device is changing the industry ecosystem. In the past, edge rolling equipment that could balance efficiency and precision mostly relied on imports, with a single unit price exceeding 500,000 yuan, which deterred small and medium-sized enterprises. Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery has managed to keep its cost at 60% of similar imported equipment by optimizing the supply chain and simplifying the structural design, while achieving a higher level of speed and intelligence. Our goal is to make smart devices affordable for small workshops as well. The sales director of the enterprise stated that since the equipment was launched half a year ago, it has covered over 80 enterprises in 12 provinces, among which 70% are small factories with less than 50 employees.

In the field of sauce packaging, the sealing advantage of this equipment is particularly prominent. The person in charge of a sauce enterprise in Shanghai did the math: After using the edge rolling machine of Zhongneng Machinery, the sauce leakage loss caused by poor sealing dropped from 3% to 0.5%. The raw material cost saved in a year is enough to cover the down payment for the equipment. In the production of milk tea cups, the smooth rolled edges make the cup LIDS fit more closely. The number of “cup leakage complaints” of a certain chain brand has dropped from over 200 per month to single digits.

Next, we need to enable the device to “think”. The general manager of Dongguan Zhongneng Machinery disclosed that the team is developing an Internet of Things module. In the future, the equipment will be able to automatically calculate the production data of different specifications of cup shapes and even predict the lifespan of vulnerable parts. When the plastic cup edge rolling machine evolves from an “efficient tool” to an “intelligent partner”, the intelligent transformation of the food packaging industry may witness an even more rapid acceleration.