Explain it: How is cardboard made?

  • SHARE
Explain it

... like I'm 5 years old

Cardboard is made from trees, specifically from the pulp of the trees. To create this pulp, wood chips are placed in a machine known as a digester, which mixes the chips with chemicals and heat. This process separates the natural fibers of the wood, creating the pulp. This pulp then goes through a machine that flattens it into large, thin sheets. These sheets are dried, and then layered together to create the cardboard we use for boxes, crafts, and more.

Imagine making a sandwich. The bread is like the wood chips, and the digester is like your mouth, breaking down the bread into smaller pieces. The finished pulp is like the chewed bread, and the sheets of cardboard are like the layers of your sandwich.

Explain it

... like I'm in College

To get more into details, cardboard is primarily made from pulp derived from softwood trees like pine and spruce. Wood chips from these trees are steamed under high pressure in a digester with a mixture of chemicals. This process, called pulping, breaks down the lignin that binds the cellulose fibers together, resulting in a pulp.

The pulp is then washed and bleached to remove any leftover lignin and other impurities. Next, it's beaten to make the fibers swell, making them ideal for making paper. The processed pulp is then spread onto a wire mesh where it's pressed and heated to form a paper sheet. Cardboard is usually made from three layers of paper, with the middle layer being corrugated to give the cardboard its distinctive strength and rigidity.

EXPLAIN IT with

Let's imagine we're making cardboard with Lego bricks. Each brick represents a step in the process. The green bricks are the trees. We put these into our digester, a big Lego machine, and mix them up. This breaks down the green bricks into a pulp, our blue Lego bricks.

Next, we wash and bleach our blue bricks to clean them up. This is like running your Lego bricks under the tap and scrubbing them clean. Then, we need to beat our bricks to make them more flexible. Imagine squishing a soft Lego brick so it can bend.

Now, we have to shape our bricks. We press them into flat sheets and dry them. This is like putting your Lego bricks on a flat surface and pressing down on them. Finally, we layer our bricks together, like stacking Lego on top of each other to make a wall. That's how we get our cardboard, or in this case, our Lego cardboard!

Explain it

... like I'm an expert

Delving into the specifics, the production of cardboard involves a variety of sophisticated machinery and techniques. The pulping process involves a range of chemicals, including caustic soda, sodium sulfide, and anthraquinone, which work together to break down the lignin and separate the cellulose fibers.

The bleaching process uses a sequence of chemicals - typically oxygen, ozone, and hydrogen peroxide - to remove any remaining lignin and brighten the fiber. The pulp is then refined to improve the fiber-to-fiber bonding when forming the paper sheet.

The corrugated medium is created in a machine known as a corrugator. The flat paper is passed over heated plates to create the flutes, which are then glued between two linerboards. This three-layered structure is what gives cardboard its strength and adaptability.

  • SHARE