Kimberly-Clark Worldwide, Inc.

Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Lindsay Wire, Inc.

B.i. Industries, Inc.

Greg Arthur Wendt

Kimberly Kay Underhill

Bernhardt Edward Kressner

Kai F. Chiu

James Sigward Rugowski

Kai F Chiu

Mark Alan Burazin

Theodore Edwin Farrington, Jr

David Alan Heaton

James S Rugowski

Antonius F Rietvelt

Wen Zyo Schroeder

Stephen John McCullough

Kimberly K Underhill

Gary Vance Anderson

David T Evans

Kelly Steven Lehl

Throughdried tissue products such as facial tissue, bath tissue, and paper towels are made using a throughdrying fabric having from about 5 to about 300 machine direction impression knuckles per square inch (per 6.45 square centimeters) which are raised above the plane of the fabric. These impression knuckles create corresponding protrusions in the throughdried sheet which impart a significant amount of cross-machine direction stretch to the sheet. In addition, other properties such as bulk, absorbent capacity, absorbent rate and flexibility are also improved.

Method of making soft tissue products

The invention consists of soft, bulky tissue products that result from the presence of a debonder/softening agent in the outer layers of the tissue and creping under 'closed' pocket conditions. The debonder/softening agents belong to a group of organic chemicals that include several imidazolinium quaternary compounds. These chemicals do not adversely interfere with adhesion, unlike most debonders, to the drying surface of the tissue machine. They can, therefore, be placed in the outer layers of the tissue that contact the dryer surface and improve creping. The tissue can then be creped off of the drying surface using a closed pocket, that is a pocket angle of less than 80 degrees. The closed pocket creping normally produces a thicker, less dense tissue but with coarse crepe. Closed pocket creping and the presence of most debonders in the dryer side layers would be expected to also produce coarse crepe structures. However, the interaction of debonder adhesive properties and the closed pocket creping conditions produces a bulky tissue with sufficiently fine crepe structure that results in high overall softness.

Method of creping tissue webs containing a softener using a closed

A throughdrying fabric for the drying section of a papermaking machine is disclosed in several embodiments. In each embodiment, the fabric has a load-bearing layer and a sculpture layer. The sculpture layer is characterized by impression MD knuckles, in the present instance formed as warp knuckles floating over a plurality of shutes but positioned substantially above the tops of the lowest shute knuckles in the load-bearing layer so as to provide machine direction knuckles projecting in the sculpture layer. Methods of weaving the fabric are disclosed using a standard fourdrinier loom. The loom may embody an auxiliary jacquard mechanism which is effective to control the impression warps in the sculpture level to produce a wide variety of patterns of impression knuckles which, in turn, produce an image on the pulp web which the throughdrying fabric carries through the machine.

Apparatus for making soft tissue products

A forming fabric for use in papermaking machines for making tissue products in which the fabric is a three-ply fabric. The upper ply has its machine direction (MD) filaments arranged in groups so that wide channels are provided through the ply between the groups and narrow channels are provided through the ply within the groups. Cross direction (CD) filaments in the upper ply provide CD knuckles spanning across the channels to provide a gridwork for supporting fibers separated from the water of the slurry deposited on the forming fabric, the fibers having a greater density in bands overlying the wide channels than in the intermediate bands overlying the narrow channels. The lower ply is a porous fabric which further controls the flow of the water discharged from the pulp through the upper ply. The two plies are interconnected by integrated binder filaments which cooperate to maintain the groupings of the MD filaments in the upper ply. The predominant CD knuckles on the paper side of the fabric provide topographic lines crossing the MD channels diagonally in both directions.

Multi-ply forming fabric providing varying widths of machine direction

Creped tissues having improved perceived softness and appearance are made from tissue webs having at least a machine direction broken line pattern of individual densified areas containing higher mass concentrations of fibers. The broken line pattern of densified areas creates a pleasing appearance and influences the creping to provide a more uniform crepe and hence improved tissue softness.

Tissue webs having a regular pattern of densified areas

Growing community of inventors

Neenah, WI, United States of America

Greg Arthur Wendt