Paper Cores
Paper cores are strong cardboard tubes or cylinders used in fabric, adhesive, electrical, paper products, and converting industries as a sturdy base around which to wind materials for storage or distribution. Depending on the intended use of the tubes, paper cores can be made from heavy duty thick cardboard for such industries as fabric and electrical, whereas for toilet paper or paper towels, the cores can be made from thinner, less durable cardboard or paper.
Quick links to Paper Cores Information
Applications of Paper Cores
Products such as tape, paper, plastic, or metal foil are wound tightly around the core. Paper cores are essential in the process of space saving, as they are able to be used for electrical wires and similar materials that would take up more space in other methods of storage. Furthermore, they are necessary for keeping materials in good condition by preventing knotting, crinkling, and tearing. Many consumer product manufacturers use paper cores to store and hold materials.
A few consumer applications of paper cores include:
- Fabric
- Cellophane Wrap
- Aluminum Foil
- Film
- Electrical and Packing Tape
- Disposable Paper Products
- Foam
- Ribbon
- Labels and Stickers
Industrial manufacturers use cores in specialized converting, slitting, and die-cutting applications, often rolling materials around longer lengths of cores and slitting the rolled product into distributable portions. Although plastic cores are available for many such applications, paper proves consistently to be the more cost-effective, practical, and environmentally sustainable solution. Paper is easier for manufacturers to cut, purchase, and recycle than most other materials.
Paper Core Design and Customization
Made from wood pulp fiber, paper cores can be combined with a variety of adhesives and laminates that give the core properties, such as strength, water resistance, or heat resistance. Made for a wide range of applications, paper cores come in virtually limitless combinations of diameter, thickness, and length. Cores are manufactured to provide stable structure from the inside of a product roll. As opposed to many other paper tubes, such as shipping tubes or postal tubes, which are fabricated to be an outer protective layer to objects, paper cores provide support from their exterior. As such, a core has to be able to withstand the pressure of the material which is to be wound around it.
For distribution purposes, paper cores are hollow tubes that can be fed onto a horizontal pole and then rotated, releasing a desired amount of the rolled material at a time. This is a time efficient method of retrieving products from a paper core, although it is possible to use paper cores without attaching them to a holder.