An extensible slit sheet paper product is produced having an expandable slit pattern that forms open cells upon expansion of the paper product. The paper product is an extensible paper having an extensibility in the range from 1-9% in the machine direction and 1-5% in the cross direction. The expansion produces an array of hexagonal cells. The expanded extensible paper can be used to wrap an object for shipping by wrapping and cushioning the object in the expanded slit sheet material. The extensible, expandable slit sheet paper can be wrapped around itself to produce a void fill product.

A dunnage conversion machine for converting an expandable pre-slit sheet stock material into a relatively less dense dunnage product includes an improved expansion assembly that provides means for adjusting the spacing between axes of rotation of components through which the sheet stock material is drawn. The adjustability enables pre-slit sheet stock materials of differing thicknesses and/or having differing slit patterns to be fed through the expansion assembly with no or minimal compression of an expanded dunnage product, jamming in the conversion machine, bunching, and/or tearing of the pre-slit sheet stock material or expanded dunnage product resulting from expansion of the pre-slit sheet stock material.

An apparatus (10) for converting a slit-sheet stock material (16) into an expanded dunnage product (12) includes a housing (20), a pair of rollers (22, 24) within the housing extending widthwise across a path of the sheet material, and a plurality of guide strips (90) extending from an upstream side of the pair of rollers to a downstream side of the pair of rollers at a plurality of locations spaced across the width of the path. The guide strips guide the sheet material between and around the rollers. Exemplary rollers have a plurality of grooves spaced across the width of the path, and the guide strips are received in respective grooves. The guide strips may be connected by a crossbar to form a guide member.

Abound pad presents a compact and convenient form of providing a two-ply construction that includes a slit-sheet stock material that may be positioned on or hung from a flat surface at the end-user's site. The bound pad includes sheets of slit-sheet stock material that are interleafed with non-die cut separator sheets. The sheets are bound together adjacent one edge, and may be weakened adjacent the bound edge to facilitate their removal from the bound pad during use. A user creates tension by pulling a free edge of the sheet of slit sheet material away from the bound edge, thereby expanding the slit material sheet to form an expanded packaging material. The user places an article on the bound pad, wraps the article in the sheets, and tears the sheets to remove the wrapped article from the bound pad.

An expandable package filler or ornament includes a stack of sheets, such as tissue paper, foil, etc. The stack is bound together, such as by a fastener. A generally spiral cut extends from a peripheral edge of the stack toward the center of the each sheet. The cut forms each sheet into a generally spiral strip ending in a peninsula portion. Grasping the peninsula portion, lifting and shaking the stack causes the strips to fall and entangle with each other. The resulting structure is decorative and may be used to stuff a gift box, bag or basket.

A dunnage conversion system (20) for expanding an unexpanded slit sheet stock material (23) to form an expanded dunnage product (26). The dunnage conversion system includes a converging chute (28) to inwardly gather laterally-extending edges of sheet stock material towards one another, causing random crumpling of the sheet stock material to form a modified ply. The conversion system also includes feed wheels (120) that advance the modified ply through the converging chute and pinch rollers (122) that cooperate with the feed wheels to expand the modified ply traveling between the feed wheels and the pinch rollers to form a dunnage product. The expanded dunnage product is expanded both in a longitudinal feed direction and in thickness as compared to the unexpanded slit sheet stock material, and thus is a three-dimensional product having increased volume and lower density per unit of length as compared to the unexpanded slit sheet stock material.

A dunnage crumpling apparatus is provided having first and second entry-side crumpling members and first and second exit-side crumpling members. The first and second entry-side crumpling members define an entry therebetween. The first and second exit-side crumpling members define an exit therebetween that is disposed along the longitudinal path downstream of the entry. A crumpling zone being defined between the entry and exit. The first entry-side crumpling member is configured for moving at an first rate and is associated with the second entry-side crumpling member for moving sheet material through the entry in a first direction along a longitudinal path at an entry rate. The first exit-side crumpling member is configured for moving at an second rate and is associated with the second exit-side crumpling member for moving the sheet material through the exit in the first direction along the path at a exit rate that is slower than the entry rate to crumple the sheet material for producing dunnage. The entry and exit-side crumpling members are displaced laterally along the path with respect to each other to cause shearing of the sheet within the crumpling zone.

An improved expandable slit-sheet stock material is configured to aid in temporarily restricting opening of a plurality of slits of the slit-sheet stock material, such as during winding of the unexpanded stock material or during expansion of the stock material. Each slit of the plurality of slits includes one or more un-slit reinforcement portions, such as reinforcement ties, extending fully between opposite longitudinal sides of the slit, and disposed between opposed transverse endpoints of the slit. The reinforcement ties minimize or prevent tearing of the stock material during the winding or expansion. A dunnage conversion system for expanding the slit-sheet stock material includes an expander having a pair of opposed rollers. The rollers engage the stock material to effect breaking of the un-slit reinforcement portions and expansion of the slit-sheet stock material.

Dispenser with bearings for dispensing a roll of tension activated expandable sheet material, as well as methods for using the same.

A manufacturing apparatus of an environmental paper protective bag includes a planar structure manufacturing device including an inner layer unreeling module, an outer layer unreeling module and an inner-core layer unreeling module for unreeling multi-layer paper material, the unreeled multi-layer paper material superimposed, and arranged on a working platform to be transmitted along a conveying direction thereof; a tension adjusting device configured to adjust tension of the multi-layer paper material, a stretching module configured to stretch paper that has been die-cut into a network three-dimensional structure, a plurality of first gluing modules configured to glue bonding positions of the multi-layer paper material to join the multi-layer paper material together, a first press-fit module configured to press the bonding positions of glued multi-layer paper material to form a planar structure, which can solve a technical problem that conventional production equipments can't produce a protective bag with an inner-core layer.