Study of Property Change of Pulp Mold depending on the Conditions of Wet Pulp Mold Manufacturing Process

The pulp mold would be one of the promising environmental friendly materials as a substitute for the plastic material. In this study, the effects of process conditions of wet pulp mold manufacturing on the properties of the pulp mold were investigated with a pilot wet pulp mold simulator. The stock concentration, the vacuum forming pressure, the vacuum forming time and the couching condition were controlled for this experiment. The higher stock concentration, the higher vacuum forming pressure and the longer vacuum forming time resulted in the higher grammage of pulp mold samples. And the dryness of wet pulp mold sheet after the vacuum forming were also greatly affected by the process conditions. The higher number of couching process increased the higher dryness of pulp mold after couching process and the lower bulk of the pulp mold samples. Those results showed the grammage of the pulp mold made with the wet pulp mold manufacturing method were greatly influenced by the stock concentration and the vacuum forming pressure, which indicated the adequate control for the uniformity of stock concentration in the stock tank and the vacuum forming pressure of the wet pulp mold former would be the critical factors for the production of the uniform pulp mold products.