Maryland Cup Corporation

David H Herbst

Patrick T Boyle

A two-piece foam plastic cup is made from a rectangular blank and either a bottom disc or expandible plastic foam beads. The rectangular blank is pleated in triangular transverse pleats having their apices adjacent to the top rim or mouth of the finished cup to form a frusto-conical sidewall blank with a lapped side seam portion. This sidewall blank is placed in a heated mold with either foam plastic beads or a bottom disc and the mold is heated to fuse the pleats, fuse the lapped side seam, and expand the bottom material and sidewall material into a fused unitary cup or container structure having a sidewall of uniform thickness but with visible pleats therein, despite its resulting smooth surface.

Two-piece pleated foam cup

A two-piece foam plastic cup is made from a rectangular blank and either a bottom disc or expandible plastic foam beads. The rectangular blank is pleated in triangular transverse pleats having their apices adjacent to the rim or mouth of the finished cup to form a frusto-conical sidewall blank with a lapped side seam portion. This sidewall blank is placed in a heated mold with either foam plastic beads or a bottom disc and the mold is heated to fuse the pleats, fuse the lapped side seam, and expand the bottom material and sidewall material into a fused unitary cup or container structure having a sidewall of uniform thickness but with visible pleats therein, despite its resulting smooth surface.

A two-piece frustoconical container is provided with a scalloped sidewall having a lowermost depressed edge portion opposite to an uppermost edge portion in a scoop configuration engageable with foods in bulk as a scoop. When filled with food product the container will stand alone. A lapped side seam extends from the base to the uppermost edge portion to lend stiffness to the scoop configuration. A parallel vertical strip decor is provided over the major portion of the interior surface of the container and is printed thereon by a method which obviates the need to provide registry of the printing on the front and back surfaces of the strip stock from which each sidewall blank is cut. The rear surface of the strip stock is printed with a parallel chevron design, with or without occlusion of the apices of the chevrons, as desired, the apices and the printed sidewall blanks on the front surface being centered on the strip stock and the legs of the chevrons being at the same included angle and orientation as the side seam-forming ends of the sidewall blank. When the sidewall blanks are blanked (cut) from the strip stock and the ends lapped to form a side seam, the stripes at the seam and around the major portion of the interior of the thus formed frustoconical sidewall will appear parallel and be vertically disposed between the bottom and open end of the container.

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Reisterstown, MD, United States of America

David H Herbst