PRESENTER: The origin of
facial tissue may be Japanese. A 17th-Century
historical account describes Japanese blowing their
noses in small soft papers then throwing them on the ground. Modern day tissues
were first marketed in the early 1920s
as a disposable cloth for wiping off cold cream. While some sneezers still
prefer traditional cloth handkerchiefs, the
disposable paper tissue is the implement of
choice with the sniffling and lens-cleaning masses. This brand is made entirely
of recycled paper-- specifically, used
computer printer paper-- because its short, flexible
fibers produce soft tissue. The half-ton bales go into a
giant machine called a pulper. It breaks up the
paper into fibers and mixes them with water. The result is called pulp. Next, it injects
the pulp with air. This causes the ink to
detach from the fibers and cling to the air bubbles
which rise to the top and drain off. The machine then feeds
the now ink-free pulp through several rollers. Like an old-fashioned
wringer washing machine, the rollers squeeze
out the dirty water. A screw conveyor then
breaks up the pulp and moves it to the
next station which rinses it with clean water. Now the pulp is ready
to become tissue. That transformation begins
in the paper machine. It injects the pulp evenly
across the screen conveyor belt, then the pulp
passes through rollers that press out the water. The extracted water drains
down through the screen. The pulp then passes through
a hot air dryer and exits the machine as a thin
10-foot wide sheet of paper. Each jumble roll
coming off the machine contains about 37
miles of paper. The converting machine
is the giant contraption that now transforms
this paper into tissues. The first station unwinds
two rolls of paper, applying modest tension to
remove waves and wrinkles. The next station
mates the two papers, producing a two-ply sheet. The following station holds
the sheet steady with suction, as a knife slices across
it every 8 and 1/2 inches. You can see the
cuts in slow motion. At the next station,
these two-ply sheets meet up with two-ply
sheets coming from the opposite direction. Here's what that looks like in
slow motion, and at full speed. The sheets enter a mechanism
that folds them in half, in an interlocking fashion. In slow motion, you can
see how they interlock-- each sheet folded in half, one
side inserted into the fold of the next sheet. This happens at a speed
of 16 folds per second. This produces a huge stack
of folded tissue 5 feet wide. The next station separates
the big stack into small ones, in preparation for
the final cutting. Each smaller stack
contains the precise number of tissues the tissue box will
contain, from 80 to 250 sheets, depending on the format
they're packaging. The smaller stacks now
travel to the next station where an automated circular saw
cuts every 8 inches, producing the final tissue size. The interlocking
folds ensure that when you pull out one tissue, it
draws the next out of the box ready to use. To produce three-ply tissues,
the converting machine processes six rolls
into two sheets of three plies each then folds them in
the same interlocking fashion. The finished tissues
travel by conveyor belt to the automated packaging line. A robot with multiple
suction-cupped arms grabs flattened boxes one at a
time, opens them, and lines them up on another conveyor belt
running alongside the tissue belt. An automated arm
compresses the tissues and slides them into the box. The next station glues
the flaps closed. The top of the box has
a removable tab with clear plastic film underneath. A tight slide in the
film makes grabbing a single tissue a non-issue.
