7 ms·

A laser-based process that enables adhesive-free paper packaging

130 points by gnabgib 7mo ago

adolph 7mo ago
That is really neat: “By irradiating the paper with a CO laser, we create refusible, sugar-like reaction products that we use instead of the synthetic materials or adhesives that would otherwise be required to seal the paper by the heat sealing process. In this way, we are essentially producing our own adhesive"
- foxglacier 7mo ago
  It is but it completely defeats the claimed purpose of bein adhesive free.
  - lpcvoid 7mo ago
    Not if the produced adhesive is free of hydrocarbons, which it is.
    - chopin 7mo ago
      The main constituent of paper is wood, which consists of hydrocarbons.
      - roysting 7mo ago
        That’s chemically not correct in and of itself, but I do wonder if through the process they are effectively creating a hydrocarbon by freeing the oxygen from the carbohydrate to create this magic non-adhesive adhesive.
      - DFHippie 7mo ago
        Hydrocarbons are not carbohydrates.
        adrian_b 7mo ago
        Carbohydrates are oxidized hydrocarbons and hydrocarbons are reduced carbohydrates. They can be and they are interconverted, both in living beings and in the industry. In paper, most of the wood components except cellulose have been removed, so paper usually consists mostly of carbohydrates. In general any adhesive is neither a hydrocarbon nor a carbohydrate, but a derivative of them. Natural adhesives are usually derived either from proteins, e.g. various kinds of animal glues, or from starch or from various kinds of gums or of resins or of latex. Bitumen has been used as an adhesive that consists mostly of hydrocarbons, but it also includes some oxidized components that provide most of the adhesion, as pure hydrocarbons have lubricating properties, not adhesive properties.
  - ahartmetz 7mo ago
    I had the same thought, but there are two differences: the amount of these compounds (presumably low) and how they behave in recycling compared to current adhesives. Maybe they wash out, maybe they can accumulate to a large degree without making the recycled paper worse. The article doesn't tell, unfortunately. Worst case, a cool technical article is the only thing the technology is good for...
    - roysting 7mo ago
      “Maybe they wash out” … “The article doesn’t tell” It seems like you are engaging in rather emotional response when you admit you’re just hoping and making things up. That is not a very scientific basis. Are you biased towards this project or Fraunhofer by any chance, maybe just Germany in general? I agree with all the legitimate criticisms, especially considering that it is very possible that what they’re actually doing is using the laser to essentially create a hydrocarbon based glue in situ from the primary material itself. It is an interesting discovery and process in and of itself. I’m not sure why there seems to be this obsessive defensiveness of Fraunhofer in the comments here. There could be several reasons, but the PRopaganda people on this are going about things rather ham-fisted. My guess is that there are specific “eco” type grant or funding requirements that need to push the idea that it’s reducing “carbon” or oil dependence and can do away with mean old, no good, totally awful plastics; and cannot just be honest because of that, because all of the environmental stuff is so frequently inherently dishonest and rather delusional even, because ironically, the money of funding and profit and going to market cause their own greed, just from a different angle. A hidden little dirty secret in Germany in particular is that all these boutique niche solutions are really just greenwashed, statist “capitalism” rather than greenbackwashed, de facto statist “capitalism”. They’re both just theft from the multitude to enrich the minority, just by different means.
      - ahartmetz 7mo ago
        Fraunhofer institutes are not bullshit factories, they are doing research partially funded by industry, and the companies funding them are generally not the bullshit-heavy types (i.e. megacorps). The megacorps do their research in-house.
  - magicalhippo 7mo ago
    Not my field by any means, but I think it's primarily to avoid adhesives that are difficult to handle during recycling. Turning the paper molecules into simple sugars and using thosr as an adhesive is presumably beneficial because the sugars would easily dissolve in the water when the paper is recycled. Most other industrial adhesives as I understand it are hydrophobic, so aren't as easily removed.
    - adrian_b 7mo ago
      Looks like using expensive technology to provide exactly the same effect that was provided by the cheap starch-based adhesives that were used for paper when I was a child. I really hate the people who have thought that it is a good idea to replace the water-soluble starch-based adhesives that were used for labels on bottles when I was a child with modern adhesives that are insoluble in water and which are a huge PITA if you want to reuse a bottle and you want to remove the labels from it.
      - magicalhippo 7mo ago
        No expert but water-soluble adhesives like wheatpaste and such rely on the water getting absorbed or evaporated. In an industrial setting I guess that makes it too slow. Also in an industrial setting I can see an advantage of eliminating an ingredient. As for removing labels off bottles, I seem to recall my grandpa putting the bottles in a bucket of water and washing soda (sodium carbonate), and just letting them marinate for a good while. Wasn't super hard but a bit of a chore like you say.
    - toss1 7mo ago
      True, and this sounds very cool. But might it just be easier to develop and apply similar sugar adhesives, or other compatible or soluble adhesives (in quantities that will not affect the recycling process)? OFC, if you never introduce anything new, it is easier to feel like it is a "pure" process. Yet, what says the heat treatment isn't actually creating new molecules that could be recycling-incompatible, even though they never "add" any new material?
  - XorNot 7mo ago
    I mean you're eliminating an entire consumable supply chain though. Being able to have your packaging inputs be _just_ paper is a huge advantage.
  - j45 7mo ago
    Without the cost of an adhesive, and instead a really cool laser.
fritzo 7mo ago
I've also seen a glue-less paper binding trick where two pieces of paper are finely crimped together with some high pressure tool in alternating v^v^v^ patterns, actually making tiny tears in the paper. Does anyone know what kind of tool does that?
- AhCoonu7 7mo ago
  Harinacs stapleless stapler?
- gnabgib 7mo ago
  Possibly this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NeGah4YJg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NeGah4YJg0 It's a bit hard to search for, because they make one that punches a hole too (shows up in the video).
  - HiPhish 7mo ago
    The problem with these staple-less staplers is that they permanently damage the paper. With a regular staple there are two tiny holes and that's it. You can bend open the staple to get back your individual sheets (e.g. to scan a particular page) and if you want to put them back together you can push the same staple or a fresh one back through the existing holes and bend it close. You can repeat the process as many times as you want and there won't be any new damage to the paper. With a paperless stapler you would have to do new damage to the paper each time. Also, a regular staple is pretty much forever while these crimped folds can eventually come loose again.
    - ricardobeat 7mo ago
      This is meant for disposable packaging
    - appletrotter 7mo ago
      That's a lot of words to explain a simple concept
- thadk 7mo ago
RobotToaster 7mo ago
[flagged]
RRWagner 7mo ago
I thought that this was going to be illustrations of the marvelous ways that the Japanese wrap and secure gifts without using any tape. When I was in Japan years ago I would tell them that a purchase was a gift just to see how they wrapped things. I might even still have something that I never unwrapped because the finished thing was a work of art in itself.
- skyberrys 7mo ago
  Me too, I'm glad I read through the article, but the Japanese shop wrapping technique is interesting too.
goodmythical 7mo ago
[flagged]
- pseudosaid 7mo ago
  dont be like that. so semantic youre missing the point so you can dote on yourself. I feel like its pretty obvious they mean an adhesive in the sense of an additional substance or agent. Just because they use a laser to modify the paper structure to effectively become sticky, doesnt detract at all from the goal and point of the title. that no additional products/agent/glues were needed. absolutely missing the point of it all just to jerk your ego off. this is so prevalent on HH that it’s normalized and most the cerebral bozos cant read between lines beyond their self righteous vantage.
  - DoctorOetker 7mo ago
    I think the remark -while rude- brings up an important point: is the in-situ generated adhesive compatible with the paper recycling processes? if so, it seems that simply applying the discovered in-situ chemicals artificially would be faster and not rely on CO2 laser tube set-up (they don't last forever). If it IS compatible with the later recycling steps, then what prevents us from simply applying a similar or simplified mix of chemicals generated by the CO2 laser treatment? Suppose some adhesives already use the same or similar chemicals, the question would arise if you really discovered a compatible glue, or if you just discovered a proper dosage in your application? We can keep coming up with elegant research showing this or that is compatible with a certain recycling step, in the case that some players in industry use inappropriate amounts of glue, the problem would not be a lack of compatible glues but proper dosing, or tracing the manufacturer / end-users of the glue/paper combination that gunked up some recycling process.
    - pseudosaid 7mo ago
      no one mentioned recycling. you introduced that. the above poster is simply conflating altering a materials surface to be sticky, with applying a 3rd party compound to achieve tack. its intellectually tacky, and i dont even know what youre doing. youre just leveraging this to bring about a point of your own, which is deserving of being its own parent comment. but in earnest reply, the question I have is in the change in material surface that becomes sticky. How does that become incompatible with current recycling processes if the base material was compatible? I dont know enough chemistry but it seems to me the post-co2-treatment material should break down the same way in an industrial recycling process.
cindyllm 7mo ago
[dead]
skyberrys 7mo ago
What a cool read? I didn't expect lasers to be the answer. I use rubber bands all the time to hold paper wrap together. I thought the answer would be rubber bands or strings (analog version).
esaym 7mo ago
Has anyone seen my stapler?
- roysting 7mo ago
  But that doesn’t come with government grants and follow-on funding and subsidies to take it to market under government protection and by being able to use eco-marketing.
vintermann 7mo ago
Since Fraunhofer is a notorious patent extortionist, best to not even look at this page.
- aktenlage 7mo ago
  Can you elaborate on this? My guess would be, that because of their status as a government backed research institute, they invent a lot, but let others do the commercialisation. So patent fees seem like a natural choice for them, to recover their investments.
  - wuschel 7mo ago
    Seconded. Would love to hear about “best Fraunhofer practices” and fort hand experience. What could one improve how the operate?
  - IshKebab 7mo ago
    They had patents on MP3 that were a pain in the arse 30 years ago.
    - vintermann 7mo ago
      Their last lawsuit, another "submarine patent" grift by the looks of it, was dismissed as recently as 4 days ago.
- silisili 7mo ago
  Fraunhofer has a ton of top of the line innovations. I'm glad it exists. If the only way to exist is for them to collect on patents they've produced, I don't see the issue.
  - vintermann 7mo ago
    I'd gladly take every Fraunhofer "innovation" 5 years later if it meant Fraunhofer didn't exist. Compression patent extortionists are the scum of the earth.
KnuthIsGod 7mo ago
"By irradiating the paper with a CO laser, we create refusible, sugar-like reaction products"
- amelius 7mo ago
  Can we do this at home with two sheets of paper and a lighter?
  - Aboutplants 7mo ago
    Give it a try and let us know
MajorTakeaway 7mo ago
[dead]
lormayna 7mo ago
Close where I am living (Tuscany) there is a small industrial district focused on adesive paper production. I had sent this link to a friend of mine that is working as plant manager for one of those.
nickpinkston 7mo ago
Interestingly, you can similarly friction weld wood without added adhesive. The welding utilizes the existing ligand glue that holds the wood fibers together, as it's essentially a natural composite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ

130 points by gnabgib 7mo ago

That is really neat: “By irradiating the paper with a CO laser, we create refusible, sugar-like reaction products that we use instead of the synthetic materials or adhesives that would otherwise be required to seal the paper by the heat sealing process. In this way, we are essentially producing our own adhesive"

foxglacier 7mo ago
It is but it completely defeats the claimed purpose of bein adhesive free.
- lpcvoid 7mo ago
  Not if the produced adhesive is free of hydrocarbons, which it is.
  - chopin 7mo ago
    The main constituent of paper is wood, which consists of hydrocarbons.
    - roysting 7mo ago
      That’s chemically not correct in and of itself, but I do wonder if through the process they are effectively creating a hydrocarbon by freeing the oxygen from the carbohydrate to create this magic non-adhesive adhesive.
    - DFHippie 7mo ago
      Hydrocarbons are not carbohydrates.
      - adrian_b 7mo ago
        Carbohydrates are oxidized hydrocarbons and hydrocarbons are reduced carbohydrates. They can be and they are interconverted, both in living beings and in the industry. In paper, most of the wood components except cellulose have been removed, so paper usually consists mostly of carbohydrates. In general any adhesive is neither a hydrocarbon nor a carbohydrate, but a derivative of them. Natural adhesives are usually derived either from proteins, e.g. various kinds of animal glues, or from starch or from various kinds of gums or of resins or of latex. Bitumen has been used as an adhesive that consists mostly of hydrocarbons, but it also includes some oxidized components that provide most of the adhesion, as pure hydrocarbons have lubricating properties, not adhesive properties.
- ahartmetz 7mo ago
  I had the same thought, but there are two differences: the amount of these compounds (presumably low) and how they behave in recycling compared to current adhesives. Maybe they wash out, maybe they can accumulate to a large degree without making the recycled paper worse. The article doesn't tell, unfortunately. Worst case, a cool technical article is the only thing the technology is good for...
  - roysting 7mo ago
    “Maybe they wash out” … “The article doesn’t tell” It seems like you are engaging in rather emotional response when you admit you’re just hoping and making things up. That is not a very scientific basis. Are you biased towards this project or Fraunhofer by any chance, maybe just Germany in general? I agree with all the legitimate criticisms, especially considering that it is very possible that what they’re actually doing is using the laser to essentially create a hydrocarbon based glue in situ from the primary material itself. It is an interesting discovery and process in and of itself. I’m not sure why there seems to be this obsessive defensiveness of Fraunhofer in the comments here. There could be several reasons, but the PRopaganda people on this are going about things rather ham-fisted. My guess is that there are specific “eco” type grant or funding requirements that need to push the idea that it’s reducing “carbon” or oil dependence and can do away with mean old, no good, totally awful plastics; and cannot just be honest because of that, because all of the environmental stuff is so frequently inherently dishonest and rather delusional even, because ironically, the money of funding and profit and going to market cause their own greed, just from a different angle. A hidden little dirty secret in Germany in particular is that all these boutique niche solutions are really just greenwashed, statist “capitalism” rather than greenbackwashed, de facto statist “capitalism”. They’re both just theft from the multitude to enrich the minority, just by different means.
    - ahartmetz 7mo ago
      Fraunhofer institutes are not bullshit factories, they are doing research partially funded by industry, and the companies funding them are generally not the bullshit-heavy types (i.e. megacorps). The megacorps do their research in-house.
- magicalhippo 7mo ago
  Not my field by any means, but I think it's primarily to avoid adhesives that are difficult to handle during recycling. Turning the paper molecules into simple sugars and using thosr as an adhesive is presumably beneficial because the sugars would easily dissolve in the water when the paper is recycled. Most other industrial adhesives as I understand it are hydrophobic, so aren't as easily removed.
  - adrian_b 7mo ago
    Looks like using expensive technology to provide exactly the same effect that was provided by the cheap starch-based adhesives that were used for paper when I was a child. I really hate the people who have thought that it is a good idea to replace the water-soluble starch-based adhesives that were used for labels on bottles when I was a child with modern adhesives that are insoluble in water and which are a huge PITA if you want to reuse a bottle and you want to remove the labels from it.
    - magicalhippo 7mo ago
      No expert but water-soluble adhesives like wheatpaste and such rely on the water getting absorbed or evaporated. In an industrial setting I guess that makes it too slow. Also in an industrial setting I can see an advantage of eliminating an ingredient. As for removing labels off bottles, I seem to recall my grandpa putting the bottles in a bucket of water and washing soda (sodium carbonate), and just letting them marinate for a good while. Wasn't super hard but a bit of a chore like you say.
  - toss1 7mo ago
    True, and this sounds very cool. But might it just be easier to develop and apply similar sugar adhesives, or other compatible or soluble adhesives (in quantities that will not affect the recycling process)? OFC, if you never introduce anything new, it is easier to feel like it is a "pure" process. Yet, what says the heat treatment isn't actually creating new molecules that could be recycling-incompatible, even though they never "add" any new material?
- XorNot 7mo ago
  I mean you're eliminating an entire consumable supply chain though. Being able to have your packaging inputs be _just_ paper is a huge advantage.
- j45 7mo ago
  Without the cost of an adhesive, and instead a really cool laser.

fritzo 7mo ago

I've also seen a glue-less paper binding trick where two pieces of paper are finely crimped together with some high pressure tool in alternating v^v^v^ patterns, actually making tiny tears in the paper. Does anyone know what kind of tool does that?

AhCoonu7 7mo ago
Harinacs stapleless stapler?
gnabgib 7mo ago
Possibly this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NeGah4YJg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NeGah4YJg0 It's a bit hard to search for, because they make one that punches a hole too (shows up in the video).
- HiPhish 7mo ago
  The problem with these staple-less staplers is that they permanently damage the paper. With a regular staple there are two tiny holes and that's it. You can bend open the staple to get back your individual sheets (e.g. to scan a particular page) and if you want to put them back together you can push the same staple or a fresh one back through the existing holes and bend it close. You can repeat the process as many times as you want and there won't be any new damage to the paper. With a paperless stapler you would have to do new damage to the paper each time. Also, a regular staple is pretty much forever while these crimped folds can eventually come loose again.
  - ricardobeat 7mo ago
    This is meant for disposable packaging
  - appletrotter 7mo ago
    That's a lot of words to explain a simple concept
thadk 7mo ago

RobotToaster 7mo ago

[flagged]

RRWagner 7mo ago

I thought that this was going to be illustrations of the marvelous ways that the Japanese wrap and secure gifts without using any tape. When I was in Japan years ago I would tell them that a purchase was a gift just to see how they wrapped things. I might even still have something that I never unwrapped because the finished thing was a work of art in itself.

skyberrys 7mo ago
Me too, I'm glad I read through the article, but the Japanese shop wrapping technique is interesting too.

goodmythical 7mo ago

[flagged]

pseudosaid 7mo ago
dont be like that. so semantic youre missing the point so you can dote on yourself. I feel like its pretty obvious they mean an adhesive in the sense of an additional substance or agent. Just because they use a laser to modify the paper structure to effectively become sticky, doesnt detract at all from the goal and point of the title. that no additional products/agent/glues were needed. absolutely missing the point of it all just to jerk your ego off. this is so prevalent on HH that it’s normalized and most the cerebral bozos cant read between lines beyond their self righteous vantage.
- DoctorOetker 7mo ago
  I think the remark -while rude- brings up an important point: is the in-situ generated adhesive compatible with the paper recycling processes? if so, it seems that simply applying the discovered in-situ chemicals artificially would be faster and not rely on CO2 laser tube set-up (they don't last forever). If it IS compatible with the later recycling steps, then what prevents us from simply applying a similar or simplified mix of chemicals generated by the CO2 laser treatment? Suppose some adhesives already use the same or similar chemicals, the question would arise if you really discovered a compatible glue, or if you just discovered a proper dosage in your application? We can keep coming up with elegant research showing this or that is compatible with a certain recycling step, in the case that some players in industry use inappropriate amounts of glue, the problem would not be a lack of compatible glues but proper dosing, or tracing the manufacturer / end-users of the glue/paper combination that gunked up some recycling process.
  - pseudosaid 7mo ago
    no one mentioned recycling. you introduced that. the above poster is simply conflating altering a materials surface to be sticky, with applying a 3rd party compound to achieve tack. its intellectually tacky, and i dont even know what youre doing. youre just leveraging this to bring about a point of your own, which is deserving of being its own parent comment. but in earnest reply, the question I have is in the change in material surface that becomes sticky. How does that become incompatible with current recycling processes if the base material was compatible? I dont know enough chemistry but it seems to me the post-co2-treatment material should break down the same way in an industrial recycling process.

cindyllm 7mo ago

[dead]

skyberrys 7mo ago

What a cool read? I didn't expect lasers to be the answer. I use rubber bands all the time to hold paper wrap together. I thought the answer would be rubber bands or strings (analog version).

esaym 7mo ago

Has anyone seen my stapler?

roysting 7mo ago
But that doesn’t come with government grants and follow-on funding and subsidies to take it to market under government protection and by being able to use eco-marketing.

vintermann 7mo ago

Since Fraunhofer is a notorious patent extortionist, best to not even look at this page.

aktenlage 7mo ago
Can you elaborate on this? My guess would be, that because of their status as a government backed research institute, they invent a lot, but let others do the commercialisation. So patent fees seem like a natural choice for them, to recover their investments.
- wuschel 7mo ago
  Seconded. Would love to hear about “best Fraunhofer practices” and fort hand experience. What could one improve how the operate?
- IshKebab 7mo ago
  They had patents on MP3 that were a pain in the arse 30 years ago.
  - vintermann 7mo ago
    Their last lawsuit, another "submarine patent" grift by the looks of it, was dismissed as recently as 4 days ago.
silisili 7mo ago
Fraunhofer has a ton of top of the line innovations. I'm glad it exists. If the only way to exist is for them to collect on patents they've produced, I don't see the issue.
- vintermann 7mo ago
  I'd gladly take every Fraunhofer "innovation" 5 years later if it meant Fraunhofer didn't exist. Compression patent extortionists are the scum of the earth.

KnuthIsGod 7mo ago

"By irradiating the paper with a CO laser, we create refusible, sugar-like reaction products"

amelius 7mo ago
Can we do this at home with two sheets of paper and a lighter?
- Aboutplants 7mo ago
  Give it a try and let us know

MajorTakeaway 7mo ago

[dead]

lormayna 7mo ago

Close where I am living (Tuscany) there is a small industrial district focused on adesive paper production. I had sent this link to a friend of mine that is working as plant manager for one of those.

nickpinkston 7mo ago

Interestingly, you can similarly friction weld wood without added adhesive. The welding utilizes the existing ligand glue that holds the wood fibers together, as it's essentially a natural composite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0k04hjdYuQ