Dating back to ancient china, facial tissues are an integral aspect of everyday life. From providing comfort during cold and flu season to removing fingerprints from eyeglass lenses, we have grown used to having tissues within arm's reach.
Now, as facial tissues are commodity items, there are countless brands that produce them. Regardless of what brand you buy, however, how they are produced is relatively universal.
That said, how does a material like woven wire mesh fit into this production process?
W.S. Tyler is a wire mesh supplier that has helped customer leverage the material beneficial qualities to produce products they can proudly stand behind for over 150 years.
To continue our mission in doing so, we wrote the following article to help you better understand if and how woven wire mesh fits into your facial tissue production line. We will cover:
Traditional facial tissue starts as pulp made from trees or, more commonly, recycled paper. The material being used is placed into a pulper which works to break down the fibers and mix them with water forming the pulp.
Air is then pumped into the pulp to help decontaminate the fibers.
At this point, the pulp is fed onto a large mesh belt that carries the wet pulp through several rollers. As these rollers apply pressure to a pulp, the water drains through the openings of the mesh.
The dewatered pulp is then broken down and transferred to a paper machine.
This paper machine evenly distributes the pulp across a screen belt that, again, projects the pulp through several rollers that force water out of the pulp and through the bottom of the screen. The belt then carries the pulp through a dryer and is rolled into bulk rolls of paper.
Two rolls of paper are now taken to a converting machine that removes any wrinkles are folds in the paper. The two rolls of paper are then merged, forming a singular, two-ply sheet.
The newly formed two-ply sheet is now cut in eight-and-a-half-inch increments and merged with an adjacent two-ply sheet to form a four-ply sheet. Once combined, the four-ply sheets are founded in a way that interlocks the sheets, allowing the next tissue to be drawn once the previous tissue is pulled.
The pile of folded facial tissue is now broken down into stacks of a designated number of tissues and transferred to a cutting station. A precision cutting mechanism is used to cut the stack in eight-inch lengths.
The individual stacks are now to be packaged and prepped for shipment.
Woven wire mesh is best defined as a series of individual metallic wires interwoven to form a durable cloth used for screening and filtration applications. A heavily-monitored weaving process is used to interlock the wires, forming pore openings that are precise and rigid.
Known for its scientific accuracy, the parameter of woven wire mesh can be calculated to fabricate the best possible specification. This includes elements such as the wire diameter, alloy, mesh count, opening size, etc.
Once fabricated, additional services, referred to as value-added services, can be applied to the mesh further enhance its performance. They include welding, heat treatment, forming, calendaring, and more.
There are two instances in which woven wire mesh is used to produce facial tissue. Both instances involve using woven wire mesh as a conveyor belt that forces the paper pulp through the various rollers.
But why use woven wire mesh?
Well, it is categorized as an open product as it features thousands of pore openings throughout the weave. This allows the water in the pulp to be squeezed out as the rollers sandwich the pulp between the mesh.
However, as these pore openings are smaller than the pulp fiber, they are retained on the surface of the mesh, forming the paper layers used to construct each piece of facial tissue.
The durability of woven wire mesh also makes it an ideal solution that stands when compared to other screening media. This is critical as other media tend to flex when subjected to high amounts of pressure.
As a result, the pore openings become destroyed, potentially impacting the amount of retained pulp fiber. But because woven wire mesh is typically constructed from a stainless steel alloy, its pore openings are both precise and rigid.
In other words, the stainless steel construction preserves the profile of the mesh openings under high pressure, ensuring consistent accuracy.
Woven wire mesh can be purchased in one of three ways: as bulk rolls, cut-to-size pieces, or as pre-fabricated components. The price you can expect to pay is dependent on how you purchase your mesh.
Now, as elongated wire mesh belts are used to transport and dewater the pulp fiber, odds are you will be implementing wire mesh in rolls. That said, the price for both wire mesh rolls and cut-to-size pieces will be influenced by the following factors:
On the other hand, if your process relies on formed wire mesh components to dewater the pulp fiber used to produce facial tissue, you will want to consider wire mesh components fabricated by the mesh supplier. This is particularly true when you don't have the capacity to fabricate wire mesh in-house.
To that end, the following factors will affect the cost of fabricated wire mesh components:
When you get down to brass tacks, facial tissue is a product of molded pulp fiber. Manufacturers use wire mesh screens to dewater paper pulp, forming the soft tissues that we have become accustomed to.
Now, in order to produce reliable pulp fiber products, you must fine-tune the various specification that goes into woven wire mesh. The mesh count, for example, ultimately controls how much fiber is retained during the dewatering process.
This, in turn, controls the quality of the tissue.
With over 150 years of experience weaving wire mesh solutions for countless industries, W.S. Tyler is here to ensure you are confident in the wire mesh you use.
Read the following article to gain a better understanding of what mesh count you should be considering: