Larry Floersch
As we all know, paper cuts can be nasty. I had one just the other day that required 48 stitches. Well, . . . okay, . . . I lied, which judging from the current political campaigns is a very fashionable thing to do. It was really only three stitches — 4-0 nonabsorbable polypropylene. Well, . . . okay, . . . I lied again. Truth be told I only needed a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Band-Aid. Small. One featuring Donatello. But it still hurt!
I am no stranger to paper cuts. When I was in college, I spent a summer working in a factory that produced corrugated paper containers (that’s ‘cardboard boxes’ to the uninitiated, but, as I quickly learned, never called by that name within the industry). One of my tasks was to assist Stan, the operator of the die cutter.
A die cutter is used to stamp sheets of corrugated board so they can then be folded and assembled into the internal packaging structures for cartons. It is a machine with a large table on which are mounted pieces of plywood (the dies) that have sharp metal ribbons inserted into them edgewise to form designs. A sheet of corrugated board, often four by six feet or more, is placed on the die. The table with the die and the sheet roll into the machine and the machine presses down on the sheet, causing the metal ribbons to cut the design into the sheet.
My role was to pull the sheets of corrugated board off the die when the table rolled back out. Simple enough, even for a college student whose primary thoughts on a 24-hour basis were about girls and beer.
The problem was that corrugated board consists of two relatively thin sheets of stiff brown paper between which is glued a corrugated sheet. This produces two outer edges that can be razor sharp. And the corrugated board is moving as you remove it from the die.
On my first day assisting Stan, he started up the die cutter and on my second or third attempt to remove a sheet from the moving die, I got a paper cut across the palm of my hand.
I signaled to Stan that I was injured. That crazy Stan had a such a zany sense of humor that he sneered at me and turned up the speed of the machine.
I tried to keep up, but after receiving several more cuts, I failed to pull a sheet off the die because blood can be slippery when it escapes its normal containment system and I lost my grip. Mayhem ensued, as another sheet on top of the one I failed to remove ran under the press. Pieces of corrugated board began to fly in all directions.
A smirking Stan hit the shut-off switch and ambled off to the break room while mumbling something about college boys and worthless summer help. There he waited for me to clean up the mess.
But how can paper be so dangerous? It’s only paper. Sure, it can cover a rock, but you can cut it with scissors.
It just so happens that science is on the case. As reported in Science News (Aug. 24, 2024), Kaare Jensen and colleagues at the Technical University of Denmark — and apparently having some extra time on their hands — decided to look into the physics of paper cuts.
After creating a replica of human tissue from gelatin, they found, much like Goldilocks, that paper that is very thin buckles before it can produce a cut, and paper that is too thick only indents the gelatin and does not cut it. But paper that is 65 micrometers thick is just right! That happens to be the exact thickness of now-rarely-used dot-matrix printer paper, but the paper for laser printers and on which many magazines are printed is close to that thickness.
They also found that rather than just being pressed down on the gelatin, the paper must be drawn across the gelatin to cut it. After my adventures with Stan in the container factory, just the thought of a paper edge being drawn across the gelatin gives me the willies.
Not content with their findings — or perhaps because lunch time was approaching — the researchers went on to develop a 3-D-printed tool they called a ‘Papermachete.’ When loaded with a strip of printer paper, they used it to slice cucumbers, apples, green peppers, and chicken. I think the lesson here is never get between a bunch of Danish physicists and their smorgasbord when they are wielding Papermachetes or you may end up looking for a box of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Band-Aids.
Prof. Jensen and colleagues speculate that their new ‘cutting edge device’ could become a type of cutlery with low-cost replacement blades. Who knows? In the future shaving may involve a ream of Hammermill Plus copy paper for replacement blades instead of GilletteLabs stainless steel.
Jensen said they plan on future work with more anatomically correct finger-shaped materials, although Jensen added, “Ideally you would want some test subjects, but it’s hard to find volunteers.”
I would without hesitation gladly volunteer Stan for that job if I only knew where he lived nowadays.
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