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news | April 08, 2026

Calculating sheet size required for creating a cubic corrugated box

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Basically I am developing a software for Corrugated Box Manufacturing Industry, but stumbled upon the calculations regarding the initial sheet size and weight required to create box of a particular specifications.

Lets say I want to create a box of following specifications:

Total Ply: 3 (means single wall) Flute in middle paper: 50% Length=10 inch Width=10 inch Depth=10 inch

I have single paper roll of 100 GSM and appropriate width.

I'll be really glad if anyone can suggest me appropriate formulas for calculating the specifications is the sheet required to create a box with a paper of above given specifications.

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1 Answer

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Calculation for corrugated boxes involve a few of the following 1. Box size in mm 2. thickness of the box in terms of 3 ply, 5 ply, 7 ply ie. no. of layers of paper in the box. 3. Thickness of the paper in each layer in GSM (grams per sq. meter) eg, 100gsm, 120 gsm, 150 gsm etc. 4. Weight of the box is to be then calculated 5. Weight of the box is then multiplied by rate of the paper+conversion cost.

for eg. for a box of 254mm x 225mm x 150mm 3 ply box of 100 gsm weight is calculated as follows

Length of the board = 2 x length of box +2 x width of box + joint allowance + triming allowance to calculate length of boards 254mm + 3mm (for thickness of 3ply) lenght = (254+3) + (225+3) + (254+3) + (225+3) + 25mm (for joint) + 20mm (for trimming) = 257+228+257+228+25+20 = 1015mm Length of the board is 1015mm to calcuate width of the board 1/2 width of box + Height of box + 1/2 widht of box (112.5mm + 3mm) + (150mm + 6mm) + (112.5mm +3mm) + 20mm = 407mm Width of the board is 407mm to calulate the weight of the box

length of the board x widht of the board x GSM of the paper x ply for 3 ply it is take as 3.5 as one layer in the middle is 1.5 times more than plain sheet. so the calculation is done in meters to get the weight in kgs. convert mm into meter by dividing by 1000 and paper wt. is in grams divide it by 1000 to get in Kilogram (1015/1000) x (407/1000) x (100/1000) x 3.5=0.144587 approx 0.145 grams

mutliply the wt with rate if rate of the paper is 20 and your conversion charges (expenses per kg) is 15 then 0.145*35 = 5.075 or 5.08 is the cost of the box.

Hope this information is detailed for 5 ply multiply by 6 (1+1.5+1+1.5+1) sililarly for 7ply multiply by 8.5

you can also calculate for different combination of grammage of the paper ie., GSM for 100, 120, 150 or a combination of the same when you do that you must multiply product of length and width of the board with substance of the board. substance is the total grammage of the board for eg. 3ply 100 gsm substance is 350, for 3 ply top 120gsm rest 100 gsm substance will be (120+ (100*1.5)+100) = 370 and similar for different combination. My email is you can contact for any clarification of the above for your calculation purposes. if useful please acknowledge

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