Pencils Metal Recycling Coffee
The lead inside a pencil isn't actually lead. It's mostly graphite, which was discovered in england in the mid-1500s, giving birth to the pencil industry. In 1795, a french chemist invented a new type of pencil lead, made of graphite powder and clay fired in an oven, making it possible to produce leads with different hardness. For the pencil's body, you need a type of wood that's soft enough to sharpen, yet strong enough not to bend under the writer's hand pressure. This german pencil factory uses cedar from california. The wood is . 2 inches thick and arrives precut in slats of 7 x 2 1/2 inches. One by one, the slats pass under a giant cutting wheel. It carves grooves that will become the channel down the middle that holds the lead. The next machine fills the grooves with glue, a special formulation that's slightly elastic. This cushions the lead so that it's less likely to break inside the channel. Every second slat moves onto another conveyor belt. The ones that stay on this line head toward the machine that lays in the lead. The lead is made of a graphite-and-clay mixture, baked in an oven at almost 1,500 degrees fahrenheit. The lead-laying machine's wheel loads itself with leads, their spacing matching the grooves in the slats. It's the same process for colored pencils, only the leads are made of wax, clay, and pigments with no baking required. Now for the slats that move to that other conveyor belt. An automated arm flips each one over, slides it across a glue applicator, then drops it onto a leaded slat on the other conveyor belt. All the steps to this point have culminated in what is effectively a lead sandwich. Now a plunger squeezes those sandwiches together with a full ton of pressure. It compresses them for an hour while the glue dries. After that, it's just a matter of slicing the sandwiches into pencils. The shaping machine makes the hexagonal profile in two steps. First, its upper cutter forms three sides on top, then its lower cutter shapes three sides on the bottom. As soon as the bottom side is cut, the pencils separate. A worker pulls a sample pencil from each batch coming off the line and manually sharpens it to spot-check lead quality. Then he applies force to the tip until it breaks. For a pencil to pass this strength test, it has to withstand at least 4 1/2 pounds of force. Now it's time to dress that bare wood. One at a time, the pencils shoot through a device called a lacquering head. It coats the wood in paint, yellow in this case. It takes four coats of paint to completely hide the wood grain. A fifth lacquering head paints a black stripe, this company's trademark. Then a sixth head seals the paint job with a transparent lacquer. From the paint line, the pencils make their way to a stamping machine at an astounding rate of 500 pencils a minute. The machine heat-transfers foil lettering from a plastic film to the painted wood. Last stop-- the rubber-tip assembly machine. First, it squeezes the top of the pencil to slide on an aluminum ferrule. Then it inserts a rubber eraser into the ferrule's other end and squeezes that tight. European-style pencils have a painted cap instead, the color indicating how hard the lead is. After a coat of transparent sealer, the pencils take a series of dips in the first color, then, once that dries, in the second color. The final coat is a high-gloss lacquer. The pencils are finally ready to roll... Across a grinding drum for sharpening. By the time they roll off, they're pointed perfection. Looking as good as they perform, today's pencils sure have the right stuff. There are two types of scrap metal-- ferrous and nonferrous. Ferrous scrap is scrap iron and steel that comes mainly from old cars. Nonferrous scrap metal includes aluminum, copper, lead, and nickel. And the best part is metals can be recycled indefinitely without losing any of their properties. Each year, north american auto plants build millions of cars. Eventually, they end up here, at a scrap-metal-recycling facility. It takes about two days to process the raw material, mostly old cars and appliances. Crane and bulldozer operators scan the raw material as they gather and stack it. They're looking for anything they can't process-- propane tanks, glass, or heavy iron that will not shred and that could cause damage to the machinery. An inspector goes into the stockpile to check the material more closely, then signals the crane operator that he can proceed with the next load. The crane's grapple delivers load after load onto a conveyor belt that leads into a shredder. The belt speeds up or slows down according to the weight of the material to feed just the right amount into the shredder. Here's the feed box that contains the shredder laid open. An inspector checks it daily for damage. There's a lot of wear and tear on this machinery. A 4,000-pound drum grabs the material as it comes off the conveyor and forces it into the shredder. Its giant hammers pound away at the cars, mattresses, and other recyclable items, shredding them into fist-sized chunks. An industrial vacuum sucks out bits of rubber or glass mixed in with the shredded steel. The steel pieces stick to these magnetic drums. Anything else falls through to a conveyor belt below. Here, pickers remove any unwanted material caught on the steel pieces, and the clean shredded steel is ready for shipping to customers like steel mills and foundries. The material the magnetic drums don't collect goes on for more processing. There's precious nonferrous metals such as copper or brass mixed in with shredded debris. It all goes into a machine called a trommel, where a rotating drum separates the material by size. Any leftover residue is just trash. But before it goes to a landfill, an inspector checks it to make sure no valuable material has slipped through. The material from the trommel is evenly dispersed onto a conveyor that takes it to a machine called an eddy current separator. Inside, a rotating magnetic drum creates a strong magnetic field that repels nonferrous metals right up and over a barrier into a storage bin. Any material that doesn't make it over the barrier goes through the separator one more time, just in case there's still some valuable nonferrous metals mixed in. A conveyor belt carries out the worthless residue to a trash heap. A different conveyor belt carries the nonferrous metal out of the separator and loads it into a bin for sale. It will go to another plant where they'll separate it by type of metal-- mainly copper, brass, and aluminum. After all that shredding, sifting, and separating, here's what's left of the average used car. Take away the rubber, plastic, and upholstery, and you have some shredded steel... And some valuable nonferrous metals. That's a lot of useful material thanks to some efficient recycling. According to legend, a goat herder in ethiopia discovered coffee around 850 a.d. eventually, the beverage reached italy, where the first european coffeehouse opened in 1645. Today, about 2 billion cups of coffee are drunk each day around the world, making coffee the second-most valuable trading commodity after oil. Coffee's flavor depends on the region where it grows and the way coffee makers roast and blend the beans. Here in costa rica, they grow coffee plants from sprouted seeds kept in containers for a full year before they transplant them into the field. From seed to first harvest takes about two years. Coffee plants flower over the course of three days, covering the fields with fragrant jasmine-like blooms. Over six months' time, the buds grow and ripen into red cherries that contain the coffee bean. Pickers harvest the red cherries, leaving the green ones to ripen. They'll return to pick the cherries from the same plant five times in three months as they ripen. Pickers do their best to have no more than 2 green for every 100 red cherries they harvest. They empty their bins into bags and load them into trucks. Each bin produces about 4 1/2 pounds of coffee beans, enough to make about 200 cups of coffee. The fresher the berry, the better the flavor. Cherries picked in the morning are at the wet mill, ready for processing that afternoon. At the wet mill, water channels wash the cherries and drop them off at a worm screw. It loads them into a pulping machine to remove the outer skin and fruit. A rotating drum presses the cherries against the wall of the pulper and squeezes out the bean. From the pulping machine, the beans flow in water to two large rotating cylinders. They sift the beans to separate them from any of the hard green cherries that pass through the pulping machine. Next, the beans bathe in more water, which draws out a thick sugary substance known as miel, "honey" in spanish. The coffee maker then feeds the washed beans to make sure they're no longer sticky. The beans then drop into the drying bin below. Workers now lay out the beans to dry in the traditional way-- outdoors on a cement patio. For four days, they rake over the beans as they dry in the hot sun. At night, they let the beans rest to extract the most flavor. Once the beans are dry, they go into a milling machine. Inside, large stones grind away the parchment-like hull from the bean. Drying methods vary among coffee makers. They're a closely guarded secret. The beans can also dry mechanically in rotating drums that pump in heated air. Workers closely monitor the process and empty the drums when the beans are dry. A supervisor smells them to check for a vinegar-like odor. That would mean the beans are fermenting, a result of improper drying. The dry beans have their husks removed, then go on to an oscillating table that separates them by weight into three grades, the heaviest being the first-grade beans. Workers pour out each grade into burlap bags. Their contents must weigh in at 152 pounds per bag. Finally, they stitch them up and stack them for shipping. Next, we'll see the whole process that turns these green coffee beans into a steaming cup of gourmet coffee. Coffee boasts more than 800 flavor characteristics, at least double those of wine. Roasting reduces the amount of caffeine in the bean. To achieve a dark-espresso roast, the beans remain in the roaster the longest, so they have the least caffeine. It's the concentrated brew that packs espresso's punch. These green coffee beans have just arrived from the wet mill. Workers pour them out into a blending bin that feeds a roasting machine heated to 356 degrees fahrenheit. At that temperature, the oils in the beans combust, and the beans roast in less than 20 minutes. The master roaster must regularly check their progress. When he determines they're ready, he sets off a light spray of water in the roaster to extinguish the beans. Then they pour into a bin where they're cooled by forced air. As they roast, the beans go from green to golden brown, then black. Before roasting an entire shipment of beans, coffee makers first test a small batch. They follow a standardized procedure at the plant's testing laboratory. First, they roast a half-pound of beans in a small gas oven for a few minutes. Then a professional taster measures out the beans and feeds them into an electric grinder. She prepares four separate cups of coffee with the same coarse grind. It takes 4 tastes to make sure all is well, 20 to detect the source of a problem roast. She begins by pushing aside the foam at the surface to release the intense aromas, a technique known as breaking the cup. She smells each cup in turn, a sure way to know if something is wrong with the roast. Next, she skims the surface to remove the grounds. She takes a sip, slipping the coffee over her tongue to get the full flavor before spitting it out. Now she can determine how she will balance the blend of beans to create a recipe for the perfect cup of coffee. Back on the factory floor, the various beans for the blend go into a grinder. It will produce the desired grind-- coarse, medium, or a fine espresso like this. Now the coffee is ready for packaging. It's a fully-automated process thanks to this machine that forms, fills, and seals the bags. Gourmet coffee must go piping hot from the grinder to the bag to ensure freshness. As the machine seals each bag, it pumps in nitrogen to replace the oxygen that makes coffee stale. The machine separates the bags, and they fall onto a custom-designed conveyor belt that weighs each one as it passes through. Over at the espresso machine, the barista demonstrates the technique required for a perfect espresso. She puts a quarter-ounce of ground coffee into the holder, tamps it down firmly, then wedges it in place. The machine applies water pressure to extract the espresso. The distinctive foam is a sign this coffee's first-rate. The barista also demonstrates how to use a french press or cafetière. She adds boiling water to the coffee grounds, then pushes them down to the base. Again, she applies pressure, manually this time, to extract the coffee's aroma. Finally, she demonstrates how costa ricans make a traditional cup of coffee. She places a chorreador, a fine cotton sieve, over the cup, pressing on the ground coffee with a spoon as she pours in boiling water. No matter which one you choose, with the right gourmet roast, all three methods will produce an outstanding cup of rich, flavorful coffee.