The main goal of a packaging department in any business is to ensure the safety and protection of the packed product. Most packaged products are fragile, requiring a paper core, which provides a strong structure from within a product roll. Paper core manufacturers design them to provide support from the outside and are strong enough to endure the force of the material wrapped around it. Here is everything you need to know about paper cores.
What Is a Paper Core?
A paper core is a long cardboard tube with high resistance to external pressure. They are also known as fiberboard cores and spiral-wound paper cores. Adhesives join the paper layers by laminating or gluing them together. The number of layers wrapped during manufacturing may affect the wall thickness of the tube.
Paper cores are essentially thick-walled paper tubes. The thicker walls of a paper core allow the winding of flexible sheets or webs into rolls in the conversion process.
Materials Used by Paper Core Manufacturers
Paper core manufacturers use paper or paperboard wound plies in making paper cores and other related products. They use layers of brown paperboard or kraft paper in plies to make a paper core. The paper core manufacturers may use the wrap and liner of various materials (foil, film, etc.) or customized papers. Apart from water resistance, the specialist papers and materials may include images, color, or labeling.
Paper Cores Manufacturing Process
The first step in the manufacturing process is to prepare raw materials for feeding into the machine: special paper and glue. The paper comes in 1,000-square-foot rolls and is 4 inches wide.
You can determine the thickness of the paper core’s wall by the number of plies (layers) used. The manufacturer ensures it is set up at the proper angle to make a smooth spiral as it passes through the machine.
Paper strips run through a glue pan. This helps to keep the plies together and prevents the end product from collapsing or falling apart.
The glued strips converge as they move around metal bars known as mandrels. You can determine the inner diameter of the paper cores by the mandrel size.
A strap rotates the papers. The angle of the papers as they feed in creates the spiral as they rotate. The frictional heat makes the glue dry and hardens in seconds.
Paper core manufacturers cut continuous spiral-wound paper cores to size as they come off the mandrel. The blade moves with the same speed as the core to guarantee a straight-edged cut.
Uses of Paper Cores
There are many uses for paper cores; they include:
Tiny Engineering Tools
People keep small engineering goods and parts in a medium-sized core. This is to prevent damage to the items during packing and transportation.
Paper core is an excellent transportation material for products that need to keep their precision and balance. The spirit level is one such item that might get damaged when transported in metal or other containers. The spirit level is made with a paper core to ease transportation.
Film and Tape Winding
If your company produces adhesive tapes, paper cores are the best option for packaging end products. Paper core manufacturers have refined the outer skin to enable the sliding and rolling of adhesive tape around it.
They use materials such as plastic or epoxy to refine the surface of the core for better usage and handling. The paper cores wind up the audiotapes and films and slide over the surface like adhesive tapes.
Wool Wrapping
Many businesses base the whole transportation process of the wool on the paper core to which it’s attached. They wrap the final wool product around a paper core. They give the paper core a rough exterior to improve grip on the wounding wool. You can use it to store carpet yarn, coir mat, and denim.
Jute Winding
Jute winding involves working with fibers. The aim is to stretch the raw jute materials when winding to keep the original quality. You must constantly change the core to prevent losing its exterior roughness because of friction from the fiber.
The Production and Printing of Newspapers
The production and printing of newspapers use paper cores. The print media use them in paper thinning. They use paper cores at both ends of the newspaper production line. One breaks the paper, and the other one dries it by rolling it with evenly roughened exterior paper cores.
Consider Buying Paper Cores
Paper cores are the most recommended packing material for many industries. Paper core manufacturers have designed them to wind and unwind stretch films, non-woven products, metal and aluminum wires, and paper and tissue products. They are environmentally friendly. This makes them worthwhile alternative methods to consider for storing and winding around. They are highly resizable, and you can change the dimensions to meet the customer’s needs.