QualiCup™ Series — ISO 1520, BS 3900 Part 4 & DIN 53166 Compliant Cupping Tests

A Cupping Tester — also known as an Erichsen Cupping Tester or Ball Punch Deformation Tester — is a precision quality-control instrument that measures the resistance of paints, varnishes, coatings, lacquers, and related surface treatments to cracking and detachment from a metal substrate when subjected to gradual deformation by hemispherical indentation. The cupping test answers one of the most fundamental questions in coatings technology: how flexible is the coating? A coating that cracks at low indentation depth will fail prematurely in service — flaking off bent automotive panels, splitting on stamped sheet-metal components, or detaching from coil-coated architectural products subjected to forming and finishing operations. By systematically pressing a 20 mm hemispherical punch into a clamped coated panel and observing the depth at which the coating cracks or detaches, the cupping test transforms abstract coating-flexibility behavior into a defensible single numerical value — universally accepted across automotive, appliance, architectural, marine, and industrial coating-specification programs worldwide.

The international gold-standard governing cupping testing is ISO 1520, which mandates that coated test panels be slowly deformed at a constant rate between 0.1 mm/s and 0.3 mm/s without interruption — a requirement that exposes the practical limitation of manually operated cupping testers when working with thicker steel panels, where hand-cranking introduces inevitable speed variations and uninterrupted-deformation errors. Modern automated cupping testers solve this challenge by replacing the manual drive wheel with a micro-step-controlled electric motor that delivers precise, steady, uninterrupted deformation at the standards-compliant 0.2 mm/s indentation speed — eliminating operator-introduced variability and ensuring every test result is fully ISO 1520 compliant.

Qualitest offers a comprehensive QualiCup™ Series Cupping Tester portfolio engineered to match every laboratory size, budget, and throughput requirement. 

Test Every Coating. Protect Every Painted Component.

In every painted-metal manufacturing operation — automotive bodies, appliance housings, architectural cladding, marine hulls, aerospace exteriors, food-can interiors — the cupping test is the silent gatekeeper of coating flexibility. A coating that passes color, gloss, and adhesion testing in the lab but fails the cupping test will crack and flake the moment a customer bends, stamps, or forms the painted component. The coatings manufacturers, automotive OEMs, appliance brands, architectural-product producers, and contract-coating operations who consistently deliver durable, flexible, regulator-compliant painted products are the ones equipped with cupping testers built for precision, full ISO 1520 automation, and standards-compliant repeatability — and the Qualitest QualiCup™ portfolio gives you exactly that.

Whether you are qualifying a new automotive primer system, supporting a coil-coated architectural-aluminum production line, certifying marine paints for a shipyard contract, or running fundamental coating-flexibility research, Qualitest has the cupping-tester platform engineered to meet your exact needs. From the cost-effective QualiCup™-I digital manual tester to the flagship automatic QualiCup™-II with constant-speed punch and HD observation screen, every Qualitest cupping tester delivers world-class coating-flexibility performance backed by industry-leading service and support.