Have you ever thought about how little, everyday things were made? The process might surprise you!
Do you know what a zipper is? If you look on your bag, your jacket, even your shoes, you might see a zipper.
Zippers are incredibly useful and convenient. But have you ever wondered how a zipper is made?
To make zippers, pieces of material called 'tape' are first fed through a machine called the 'teeth machine.'
The teeth machine uses a rod of metal and shapes it into small 'teeth' that it then fastens onto the tape. The teeth machine can make and fasten 45 'teeth' per second!
Next, another machine takes two of these tapes with teeth and combines them together. The whole tape is now one long zipper!
Another machine separates the long zipper into small chunks.
There are two kinds of zippers. Some, like the ones on purses, need to have a stopper at the end so the two sides of the zipper do not come apart.
These zippers get something called a 'bottom stop' added to the end.
Others, like the ones on jackets, do need to come apart.
For these zippers, a machine adds two things to the end: a pin and a box. This is the part at the bottom of your jacket. To zip up a jacket, you have to put the pin in the box first.
Now, a machine inserts a slider onto each zipper, so that a person can zip the zipper up and down.
Finally, a top stop is added to the top of the zipper so that the slider will not fly off.
And there you have it: a zipper!
The next time you zip up your hoodie... Think of all the work it took to make that zipper!
