Thermoforming pours on innovation for drink dispensing

Special forming techniques support retail beverage machine launch

Complete drink dispenser rendering, image from Beck’s Brands blog

The design concept for a new beverage dispensing machine required a creative thermoformer who could develop new techniques while delivering consistent quality. The product development company leading this project chose Profile Plastics for their technical expertise and cost-effectiveness.

The project results stretched what can be done with thermoforming.

Project background

A product development house designed a new smart drink dispensing machine for a large, international beverage company. The unit was intended for placement in fast-food settings.

Rather than a simple vending machine or soda fountain, the device allowed consumers to interact with it through a touchscreen. Users would be able to create custom soft drink mixes from a range of available flavors.

The design required multiple plastic components. Internal utility parts included ice bins and barriers. Side and back surfaces were simple, mostly flat plastic panels. An insulated top was assembled from two pieces. However, the design of the front panels needed someone with advanced thermoforming capabilities.

Product designers chose Profile because of their technical aptitude and reasonable cost. The engineering team’s experience with distortion printing provided assurance that the project would succeed.

Color placement and matching presented unique challenges

Color and consistency were paramount for producing these enclosure components successfully.

The central challenge in thermoforming the drink dispenser project was fitting color areas exactly to three-dimensional shapes. A curved, inset white ribbon ran down the entire front, crossing over between two halves. The top half also features a clear rectangular area to define the touchscreen panel.

Color matching was also critical for the final customer’s approval because the project would reflect their corporate branding. Verifying color accuracy for three different color schemes during production could make or break the project.

The customer wanted to achieve an attractive “depth of image” in the surface of the parts, especially on the front panels. This look is achieved using glossy, clear, impact-resistant thermoplastic with the color silkscreen printed on the back side. Printing on the backside gives the impression of seeing into the surface of the panel.

Mapping out the distortion forming solution

The designers already knew that distortion printing for thermoforming could achieve the depth of image effect. Profile already had experience with the technique. This specialized process involves silk screening the color onto the backside of a flat clear plastic sheet before forming.

Sounds easy, but thermoforming is a stretching process. The printed color needs to be distorted so that it stretches into the proper shape during forming. Ensuring repeatability can be quite difficult.

Profile reverse-engineered the stretch to make sure the color and clear areas end up in the right locations. Using an iterative process, engineers created a grid system to measure the stretch while tooling was being developed. This gave the team a gauge for different parts of the tool, which could be inverted for printing the graphics.

Distortion printing can also be used with full color images. Learn more about special processes that Profile uses with clear plastics.

Two new vacuum forming lines were installed for this project. While the machines were relatively simple, they included clamp frames to hold the mold and each plastic sheet in the exact same position for consistent locating.

Quality control solutions

It was important to verify that the color didn’t change during forming. For advanced color control, everyone involved in the project used the same model photo-spectrometer calibrated the same to ensure consistency.

Profile created a custom quality plan to prevent cosmetic issues during production. Distortion printing on clear plastics requires keeping as much dust as possible off the parts in the process. Anti-static equipment and processes with constant monitoring were used to eliminate dust.

Result

To give retailers options, the drink dispensers were also offered with black or silver in place of the red primary color. Over the three-year life of the project, Profile manufactured thousands of each part.