Archive for the ‘Paper’ Category
With all of the buzz lately about offices and homes becoming “paperless” it is surprising how much paper American’s still use every year. In 2000 alone, we used 93,000 metric tons of paper. Modern papermaking dates back to the early 1800’s in Europe. Paper is mainly used for writing, printing and packaging. So where does all of this paper come from, and how is it made? The overall process of making paper is quite complex and detailed, but here is a brief overview of the fascinating process of papermaking.
Paper can come from a wide variety of sources including cotton, hemp, linen, bamboo, flax, but trees are by far the most common raw material used to make paper. Approximately 95% of the raw material used to make paper comes from trees. Some common trees used in the papermaking process are spruce, pine, fir, oak, maple, and birch. The cellulose fiber in a tree is what makes the tree the perfect candidate for papermaking. Generally speaking trees are made up of cellulose (a material derived from the cell walls of trees) fibers that are bonded together with lignin (a complex chemical compound derived from wood), along with sugars and various other organic compounds. On average about 40-50% of the tree is made up of cellulose that can be used to make paper.
In order to make paper, the cellulose must be separated from the lignin and other materials because only the cellulose is used to make paper. The process of separating the cellulose from the other compounds in the tree is called pulping. Pulping produces wood pulp. Wood pulp can be produced by one of two pulping methods—mechanical and chemical. Mechanical wood pulping is done by finely grinding wood to separate the cellulose from everything else. Chemical wood pulping uses chemicals, heat, and pressure to obtain the cellulose. The pulp is then bleached to get the desired level of whiteness.
Next, the pulp is diluted with a large amount of water and sprayed onto moving mesh screens in layers. This process makes a mat. The mat goes through several processes to remove the water and dry it. Then the mat goes through heated rollers to remove all remaining moisture and compress the mat into paper. At this point the mats are chemically treated (to add color, remove odor, or add water resistance) and rolled up. The paper rolls are then ready to be cut to size and shipped off and processed specifically for its intended purpose.
There are many different types and styles of paper, and many variations on the process of papermaking; however, this is a basic overview of the standard process used today. As a society, we may be trying to adopt a paperless lifestyle, but with the staggering amount of paper that we still consume on a daily basis, it seems that the papermaking process will continue on producing all of our paper goods.
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Almost every day we get little slips of curling paper as either receipts or credit card verification slips requiring our signature. If we look closely, the texture of the paper is a little odd, too. Why are they all curled up and why slick? It’s because these little receipts are often printed on thermal paper.
Thermal paper is a kind of paper that we may be most familiar with from its use in facsimile or fax machines. It has ink already spread out over the paper, but locked within a chemical matrix that keeps it invisible until that matrix is degraded by the application heat. The chemical coating is the reason for the slick feel of some thermal papers.
Thermal paper for cash registers, automated gasoline pumps and credit card machines comes on small rolls. Each of these thermal paper rolls contains hundreds of feet of paper in a very compact form. These tiny rolls help reduce the number of times the printers need to be refilled with paper during their daily usage. Using continuous rolls of paper also helps reduce paper jams and generally lowers maintenance on the machines.
Thermal printers do not need any ink, using heat to bring out the ink contained in the thermal paper instead. An inkless printer, of course, requires no printer ribbons and no ink cartridges, again reducing maintenance costs and effort.
The design of thermal printers requires fewer moving parts than most ink-based printers. This simple design reduces the opportunity for parts to wear out or break which can be another source of savings for owners of thermal printers that are often placed in very high traffic usage situations. Imagine the number of receipts printed out by the average automated gas pump on a busy street corner, for example.
The downside of thermal printers is that they cannot print in color. For the commercial operation in which they are used, that isn’t a problem. All that is required in most cases is a few lines of text as a receipt or transaction record. Most customers simple toss these away soon after receiving them anyway.
Another problem, especially with some of the older thermal papers is that they cannot be exposed to heat without releasing the ink they contain. This isn’t as messy as a pen or ink cartridge breaking open and releasing ink since all the ink is immediately soaked into the paper surface on which it resides, but does render the thermal paper unusable. Instead of a clean white surface that can be printed, the entire sheet, or large portions of it become blackened as the ink is released indiscriminately. This only happens if the thermal paper is exposed to very high temperatures, although the printing temperatures used to be lower on older models.
The widespread use of thermal paper that is stored on compact thermal paper rolls is the reason that our receipts are all curled up and feel different than ordinary paper.
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