Nature is truly marvelous, and hexagonal honeycombs are famous for their structure. Imagine the real honeycombs built by bees to store honey, pollen, and larvae. Honeycomb cardboard panels look very similar—one of the classic examples of designs inspired by nature.
The application of honeycomb structures is extensive, including architecture, aerospace, furniture, and packaging. In the packaging industry, honeycomb cardboard panels are widely used for product transportation due to its light weight, compression resistance, and impact resistance. It can effectively protect products and reduce damage rates during transportation. At the same time, honeycomb cardboard also has good thermal insulation and heat preservation properties, providing good environmental adaptability for products and meeting the packaging needs of different products.
A honeycomb structure is a natural or engineered structure that has the geometry of a honeycomb to allow the minimization of material usage, thus reducing weight and material costs. The geometry of a honeycomb structure can vary greatly, but all such structures share the common feature of forming hollow cell arrays between thin vertical walls.
Honeycomb Cardboard Panels are made based on the principles of natural honeycomb structures. It connects countless hollow three-dimensional regular hexagons made of corrugated base paper using an adhesive bonding method to form an integrated force-bearing component—the paper core, and a new type of sandwich structure environmentally-friendly and energy-saving material with bonding surface paper on both sides.
The first paper honeycomb structure may have been made by the Chinese 2000 years ago for decorative purposes, but references in this regard have not yet been found. The paper honeycomb and its expansion production process were invented by Hans Heilbrun in 1901 in Halle/Saale, Germany, for decorative applications.
In 1890, the first honeycomb structure made of corrugated metal plates was proposed for bee farming. For the same purpose, as a foundation plate for gathering more honey, a honeycomb molding process using a paper pulp adhesive mixture was patented in 1878. The three basic techniques for honeycomb production still in use today—expansion, corrugation, and molding—were already developed by 1901 for non-sandwich applications.
The base paper rack is the starting part of the honeycomb cardboard panels production line, consisting of two sets of independent base paper racks, each of which can be moved separately for easy paper feeding.
The continuous unexpanded honeycomb core is stretched, dried, and shaped through stretching and drying equipment.
After shaping in the honeycomb core stretching and drying unit, the honeycomb core is precisely glued by a double-sided gluing machine that can separate vertically, treating both the upper and lower surfaces of the honeycomb core.
In summary, manufacturing honeycomb cardboard panels generally involves two stages. The first stage is to manufacture the honeycomb core, and the second stage is to stretch and shape the honeycomb core, then through gluing, pressing, drying, and cutting, finally obtaining the honeycomb cardboard.
