User:RSherw/sandbox

Glitter manufacturing


The first production of modern plastic glitter is credited to the American machinist Henry Ruschmann, Sr., who found a way to cut sheets of plastic such as mylar into glitter in 1934. During World War II, glass glitter became unavailable so Ruschmann found a market for scrap plastics, which were ground into glitter. In 1943, he purchased Meadowbrook Farm in Bernardsville, New Jersey where he founded Meadowbrook Inventions, Inc. to produce industrial glitter. Decades later he filed a patent for a mechanism for cross-cutting films as well as other related inventions.

Today over 20,000 varieties of glitter are manufactured in a vast number of different colors, sizes, and materials. One estimate suggests 10 e6lb of glitter was either purchased or produced between the years of 1989 and 2009 however the source provides no evidence or reference point. Commercial glitter ranges in size from 0.002 to .25 in a side. First, flat multi-layered sheets are produced combining plastic, coloring, and reflective material such as aluminium, titanium dioxide, iron oxide, and bismuth oxychloride. These sheets are then cut into tiny particles of many shapes including squares, triangles, rectangles, and hexagons.