how is toilet paper spun around the roll in the factory without ripping since it's so fragile?

Answer 1

Toilet Paper is mostly made of recycled paper. First the paper is put into a vat where it is mixed with water and made into a slurry. There is a roller that has vacuum in it and tiny holes pull the paper pulp to the roller, as the roller turns the pulp is squeezed and thus the sheet is formed. The roll is approximately 4 foot wide. After the paper is wound onto the tube it is then cut with a circular saw to the correct width.

Answer 2

The toilet paper is wrapped onto the rolls at a machine called the winder. It has drives for both the parent roll (which is the big "log" of paper taken off the paper machine) and the roll cores. This allows them to keep the tension in the toilet paper very small, so it doesn't break while they are rolling it. The also slit it to the width of the rolls we use and put in the serrated cuts for each sheet.

Answer 3

The Manufacturing Process

Trees arive at the mill and are debarked, a process that removes the tree's outer layer while leaving as much wood on the tree as possible.

The debarked logs are chipped into a uniform size approximately 1 in x 1/4 in. These small pieces make it easier to pulp the wood.

The batch of wood chips—about 50 tons—is then mixed with 10,000 gallons of cooking chemicals; the resultant slurry is sent to a 60-ft (18.3-m)-tall pressure cooker called a digester.

During the cooking, which can last up to three hours, much of the moisture in the wood is evaporated (wood chips contain about 50% moisture). The mixture is reduced to about 25 tons of cellulose fibers, lignin (which binds the wood fibers together) and other substances. Out of this, about 15 tons of usable fiber, called pulp, result from each cooked batch.

The pulp goes through a multistage washer system that removes most of the lignin and the cooking chemicals. This fluid, called black liquor, is separated from the pulp, which goes on to the next stage of production.

The washed pulp is sent to the bleach plant where a multistage chemical process removes color from the fiber. Residual lignin, the adhesive that binds fibers together, will yellow paper over time and must be bleached to make paper white.

The pulp is mixed with water again to produce paper stock, a mixture that is 99.5% water and 0.5% fiber. The paper stock is sprayed between moving mesh screens, which allow much of the water to drain. This produces an 18-ft (5.5-m) wide sheet of matted fiber at a rate of up to 6,500 ft (1981 m) per minute.

The mat is then transferred to a huge heated cylinder called a Yankee Dryer that presses and dries the paper to a final moisture content of about 5%.

Next, the paper is creped, a process that makes it very soft and gives it a slightly wrinkled look. During creping, the paper is scraped off the Yankee Dryer with a metal blade. This makes the sheets somewhat flexible but lowers their strength and thickness so that they virtually disintegrate when wet. The paper, which is produced at speeds over a mile a minute, is then wound on jumbo reels that can weigh as much as five tons.

The paper is then loaded onto converting machines that unwind, slit, and rewind it onto long thin cardboard tubing, making a paper log. The paper logs are then cut into rolls and wrapped packages.

(More info at the site listed below)

Answer 4

It's a very elaborate process using belts,rollers,dancer rolls and tensioners.

Answer 5

TP is round upon a large roll...maybe 30 feet across...then it is cut into the small rolls we all use.

Answer 6

Great question. Maybe they use a fan to blow it around.

Answer 7

They use very well-trained cats.