Where does paper come from for the digital printing process of today?

Well, a lot of paper is made from what waste wood there is produced by sawmills. This raw material is broken up in giant tumbling drums at paper mills, and then washed, shredded, and ground into small wood chips as it travels along a series of vast conveyor belts. These wood chips are processed down further into a wet mulch. They‘re then bleached and essentially cooked in strong chemicals, which separates their useful cellulose plant fibers from the non-useful lignin contained in the wood.

The wood pulp needs to have its tiny fibers separated so that it can be reformed and dried into smooth, usable sheets. This separation process can be either chemical or mechanical, but it’s the substances used in the chemical separation process that first lighten the wood pulp into a paler tone.

During the paper manufacturing process, manufacturers bleach or dye this fine wood pulp further to create its final white or colored finish. The process can also involve the blending of different pulps to create varied textures, weights, strengths, and smoothness in the finished stock.

The result is a bleached, wood-mush soup, made up of interlocking cellulose fibers, which can then be sprayed out to dry as paper in its raw form. This raw paper is flattened, stretched, and dried out completely along a series of heated rollers, which finally press down the processed paper into vast continuous sheets that end up… well, paper-thin.

These vast rolls are cut down mechanically into smaller rolls, which can then be trimmed (on automated paper production lines) into countless sheets of the standard stationery sizes we all recognize.