Sleeve fabricating apparatus for fabricating cylindrical sleeves from rectangular blanks of a heat-shrinkable thermoplastic material and for transferring the sleeves, in succession, to frustoconical mandrels of a cup-forming machine. The sleeve-fabricating apparatus has a plurality of cylindrical mandrels that are rotatably affixed to a rotary turret. The sleeves are fabricated from rectangular blanks that are cut, in succession, from a web of indefinite length as the web is being unwound from a coil at an unwind stand. Each blank is longer than the circumference of the cylindrical mandrel to which it is applied, leaving ends of the blank which overlap, and the overlapped ends are joined to one another by heat-sealing. Cups are formed by the cup-forming machine, each cup being formed from one of such sleeves and a disc. The sleeve fabricating apparatus also includes a disc forming mechanism for forming discs and applying the discs, in succession, to the cylindrical mandrels. The rotary turret rotates the cylindrical mandrels, in succession, past a transfer station, where a cylindrical mandrel is approximately aligned with a frustoconical mandrel of the cup-forming machine over a finite, approximately straight lineal path, and a sleeve and a disc are transferred in unison by a transfer mechanism from a cylindrical mandrel of the sleeve fabricating apparatus to a frustoconical mandrel of the cup-forming machine, the sleeve transferred over the small end of the frustoconical mandrel to permit the transfer to take place over a finite period of time.
