Cardboard Production

the manufacture of various items from paper and cardboard, mainly packaging products such as boxes, drums, packets, cartons, and bags, as well as household items and toys. Cardboard and paper packaging is significantly cheaper and more convenient than wood, metal, or glass. The various types of packaging are soft, semirigid, rigid, combined, and outer packaging (boxes).

The production of soft paper packages (packets, envelopes, and bags) is completely automated. The automatic machines perform all the production processes, including printing, gluing, and shaping. For example, various types of packets—such as flat packets, packets with side folds, and square-bottom and hexagonal-bottom packets—may be produced automatically. The output of such automatic machines may be as high as 120, 000 packets per hour. Types of semirigid packages include folding packets and cartons made of paper with a density similar to cardboard; rigid packages include glued, sewn, and assembled cardboard cartons. The production of semirigid and rigid cartons includes cutting out the pattern and folding and converting the pattern into a carton by gluing or sewing. The structure of folding cartons makes possible their transport in folded form, with assembly directly before use. Corrugated cardboard cartons are most widely used for external packaging. Automatic assembly lines have been built for their production, making possible automation of the entire production process, starting with the entry of the intermediate product into the printing and cutting machine and ending with the output of finished boxes from the assembly and gluing machine. The output of such an assembly line is up to 15, 000 units per hour. The production of cardboard boxes from intermediate products of complex shape without glue or brackets is promising. Such intermediate products are punched on flat-die or rotation presses.

In the production of combination packages, metal tops and bottoms are attached to paper bodies made on winding machines. A special branch of cardboard production is the production from paper pulp of cast products such as bottles, cans, pails, and cartons.