Raise Your Cup to the Leading Rotary UV Printer for Stadium Cups

For years, stadium cups have been both practical essentials and effective promotional tools at events. Whether holding an iced soda or a freshly poured beer, these cups serve their purpose during the event and continue to be used long after. With their name derived from their primary usage venue—stadiums—these cups offer more than just refreshment. Recognizing the value of providing durable, reusable alternatives to disposable cups, stadiums have embraced stadium cups, often at minimal additional cost. This cost can then be transferred to consumers, offering them a lasting product while reinforcing branding efforts.

With 360° rotary printing capabilities, stadiums and event organizers can now fully leverage these cups for branding purposes, allowing for vibrant, full-color images that leave a lasting impression. Promotional printers- add a dedicated high-speed cylinder printer to your production floor to best answer the needs of these large scale events.

The era of relying on rotary attachments for UV flatbed printers has faded away, replaced by the emergence of dedicated cylindrical inkjet printers. This shift promises superior quality outcomes with significantly reduced makeshift solutions. While rotary printer attachments were previously the go-to for cylindrical vessel printing, they’ve swiftly been overtaken by more efficient methods.

Inkcups offers a full line of rotary uv printers, the Helix® line, comprised of the Helix ONE®, Helix®, Helix®+, Double Helix®, and the Revolution®.

Rotary UV Printer for Stadium Cups

The Revolution®, high-speed rotary UV printer is tailor-made for printing on stadium cups, cans, tumblers, and more. With its cylindrical inkjet technology, The Revolution® enables 360° printing on slightly tapered and cylindrical products, providing a seamless finish. Designed specifically for high-volume printing on stadium cups, The Revolution® offers integrated pre-treatment, ensuring optimal adhesion on stadium cups.

For rapid plateless bottle printing and various applications, The Revolution® utilizes Inkcups’ patented helical printing image engine, delivering superior prints at a remarkable resolution of 702 x 900 dpi. Unlike single-pass printing methods, The Revolution® can effortlessly print longer images (up to 220 mm) without the need for stitching. The helical image engine employs interlaced inkjet droplets, ensuring uniform coverage and minimizing banding and lines in prints.

Integrated Pre-Treatment

To further enhance its capabilities, The Revolution® comes equipped with integrated pre-treatment, a crucial component for ensuring proper adhesion on stadium cups. For stadium cups, we have seen the greatest adhesion properties with integrated plasma pre-treatment. The plasma pre-treatment uses the plasma portion of the flame to change the surface tension of the stadium cup to be a better surface for ink to adhere to. However, it should be noted that the Revolution® can be equipped with either plasma or corona pre-treatment, dependent on your needs.

We have an excellent resource for those looking to learn more about different pre-treatment methods: Pre-Treatment Methods.

UV Ink for Stadium Cups

Utilizing BB ultra-flexible ink for plastic, cured instantly by UV LED light, paired with the Revolution® offers vibrant colors, outstanding adhesion, and high abrasion resistance. The BB Series digital ink excels in bending and folding without compromising print quality, making it ideal for a variety of substrates, with exceptional adhesion demonstrated particularly on stadium cups. As stadium cups are typically a lighter weight material, it is possible that they would flex and need to be able to give without cracking in the users hand. Additionally, adhesion on stadium cups is important as during events they are placed in cup holders, it would be unacceptable if the paint scratched off that easily!

At NPE2024: The Plastics Show we exhibited the Revolution® printing on stadium cups. To best showcase the versatility of the Revolution®, we printed a variety of different artwork from bold logos to full 360° tip to tip designs. This allowed trade show attendees a better understanding of how artwork size impacts the speed of the machine. Attendees were wowed by the integrated pre-treatment and the fact that the Revolution has automatic load and unload, which is perfect for lighter parts such as stadium cups. The Revolution® is the complete solution for the full process of decorating stadium cups.

Please see the stadium cups we printed below:

To get started printing on stadium cups, or other cylindrical vessels, please connect with your local sales representative through: Contact Us. 

Learn more about direct-to-object printers: All About Direct to Object Printers