Paper MAchines

Modern Day Paper Making and the Fourdrinier Machine

In 1798 the principles of modern paper making were established with the invention of the modern day continuous paper machine. Previous to the invention of the continuous paper machine all paper had been manufactured one sheet at a time by dipping screened squares into vats of pulp. Surprisingly today's paper machines, though highly sophisticated, still use the same basic properties established with the original continuous paper machine more than 200 years later. Paper today is still produced by first preparing the pulp fibers, adding water and draining the water from the fibers to create paper. This is has been the same technique many hundreds of years, but today's machines make this process highly efficient, fast and cost effective. When making paper by hand, one sheet at a time you may quantify the process in sheets per hour. When making paper on today's high speed machines you speak of tons per hour with some machines producing many hundreds or thousands of tons per day.

Fourdrinier paper machine

Invented by Nicholas Louis Robert of France in 1798 the continuous paper machine was not placed into commercial operation until about 1804, though debate exists between the dates of 1804 and 1807, in England by the Fourdrinier brothers and has since been known as the Fourdrinier paper machine. The Fourdrinier machine comprised of four sections from beginning to end; first the wet end, then the press section, then the drier section, and finally the calendar section. Paper machines can be as short as 100 feet and as long as more than 100 yards. Widths and lengths of machines vary as well but can be approximately six feet wide to thirty and more feet wide.

Paper Machine - Wet End

The wet end of the machine is where the refined pulp, spilling from the headbox section is laid out to align its fibers across the width of the wire or screen of the wet end to begin the process of aligning fibers in the machine running direction and to remove water from the refined pulp which is a much as 99% water content at this stage of production. Various configurations of the wet end of the machine exist today to service different paper grade requirements but all adhere to the same principles of manufacturing.