I took some pictures at work and will try to explain each picture.
Lets start out in the roll room. These are just rolls of liner. The liner is similar to a brown paper grocery bag. Normally there are three layers in a cardboard box. Two outside layers and the middle layer is the fluted layer. It's the wavy part of the box.
The rolls are brought to the corrugator by a clamp truck. The rolls are placed on a little dolly that on a track in the floor and they are brought to the reel stand.
Just another picture of the reel stand area.
From the reel stand, the web goes through a series of rollers and into the module facer. Here a layer of glue is applied on the two outside layers. and the fluted layer is formed.
Just another shot of the module facer. Some of the rollers inside have steam running through them and those rollers will get up to 300° or more.
This is just a picture looking down the corrugator to give you an idea of how long the machine is.
Once all of the layers are put together, the corrugator will cut the sheets to a specified size, then put into a stack thats normally about 5 feet tall. The stacks will come down a series of conveyors and a forklift will pick the load up and deliver it to the press that needs that particular load.
This next set of pictures is of the Flexo press. This press makes regular cardboard boxes. Notice the stacks of "corrugated" that are ready to be made into boxes.
The sheets are loaded on a conveyor and eventually make it to the elevator. The elevator lifts the stack of corrugated to the "extendo". The extendo is basically a set of belts that deliver the corrugated to the press. Here you see the extendo in the up position. When the machine is running, the extendo is down.
These are the different "downs" on the flexo press. The first one is the infeed which brings each sheet of corrugated into the press. This press has 3 print downs meaning that it can print 3 different colors on the box. the the last down is the die cut section. This cuts the flaps, trims the edges, makes handles, etc in each box.
Each down will seperate so that you can walk inbetween them and perform any work thats needed.
This is the folding rail section. Once the corrugated is printed and all of the cuts and trims made, it will come through this section where it gets glued and then the flaps come together to complete the box.
From the folding rail section the box goes into the counter ejecter which basically stacks the boxes and pushes them off onto a conveyor.
From here the boxes continue through a series of conveyors until the get to the "unitizer" which is a machine that puts strap around the stacks of boxes. In this picture, the strapper is in the down position. because they weren't running at the time. From the unitizer the stacks of boxes go through a few more conveyors and then the forklift driver gets them and puts them on a truck thats waiting.
That is the Flexo process. Now lets take a look at the Die Cut Press. This press makes pizza boxes, food trays, dividers for cardboard boxes, etc.
The corrugated that they use is normally a large sheet. For example, when making pizza boxes they will normally make 5 to 7 boxes from one sheet of corrugated.
Here are the sheets of corrugated waiting to go to the elevator. It's basically the same process as the Flexo. The sheets go down the extendo and into the feed section.
These are the downs on the die cut press. Pretty much the same setup as the Flexo. A feed section, 3 colors and the die cut section. These down open for access as well.
Here are sheets or corrugated waiting to go into the feed section.
This is the Accustack. This is just a conveyor that takes the sheets and stacks them.
A picture from the top of the Accustack looking down towards the print downs.
Once the Accustack stacks the sheets they go to the Bundle Breaker. Remember I said that they normally are 5 to 7 boxes across. The Bundle Breaker breaks those into single stacks of boxes.
From the bundle Breaker, the stacks go to the Arpack. If the boxes are for a food product such as pizza boxes, they have to be wrapped in plastic, sort of like shrink wrap.. This is the machine that wraps them. If the boxes are not for food and don't need wrapping, they will just go through the Arpack and nothing will happen.
From the Arpack, they get stacked and go to the unitizer like the flexo boxes did then onto the truck.
A few other misc pictures.
This is the starch kitchen. It is the glue that is used on the corrugator. We mix it here on site.
This is a picture from one end of the manufacturing floor to the other. The black door at the other end is the maintenance shop where I work. The corrugator is on the right side out of the picture and on the left side are the 2 flexo's and 3 die cut presses.
12 Loading docks for trucks.
And the rail car loading dock large enough for about 6 or 7 rail cars. This is inside the building.
All of the trim pieces that are cut off of the sheets of corrugated on all of the presses are sucked up into a big vacuum system and sent down a chute that goes into the baler. Here the trim is made into bales just like hay. iIn this picture you can see a bale coming out of the baler.
If anything goes wrong with tha baler such as a jam or something, the scrap is diverted and it just dumps into a room until the baler is working again. Here is what that looks like.
These are the buckets of ink that are used in printing the boxes.
I hope that you enjoyed this tour and have an idea of how a box is made.
