As tire manufacturers, you know that quality assurance is just as important for the materials as it is for the tire manufacturing process. With this in mind, we have created this blog post to explore how tire materials directly impact performance and safety.
Inner Liner
When it comes to manufacturing high-performance tires, the quality and functionality of the inner liner play a crucial role in both performance and safety. The inner liner serves several important purposes, including ensuring air tightness, retaining air pressure, reducing noise and minimizing rolling resistance. These factors directly impact the tire’s overall performance, fuel efficiency and safety on the road.
To achieve optimal results, it is essential to choose a reliable material for the inner liner. Halogenated butyl rubber is a common choice, selected for its exceptional properties. This high-quality, synthetic rubber offers superior air tightness, allowing the tire to maintain proper air pressure over extended periods. By reducing air leakage, tires with halogenated butyl rubber inner liners provide enhanced safety, stability and reliability to drivers, even in challenging driving conditions.
At Steelastic, we offer rubber extruders so you can manufacture the inner liner with precision and reliability. This technology not only enhances efficiency and cost-effectiveness but also helps manufacturers meet the growing demand for high-performance tires in the market.
Tire Ply
The tire ply, also called body ply, serves a critical role in enhancing both performance and safety. Its primary role is to provide radial stiffness in order to maintain optimal tire pressure. Better tire pressure leads to improved handling, stability and overall tire performance on the road, but especially off the road for OTR vehicles.
Traditionally, the tire ply is created by coating polyester or rayon with rubber through a calendering process. While effective, this approach can be time-consuming and may present challenges in terms of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. At Steelastic, we offer an innovative solution: calenderless tire production equipment. Our cutting-edge technology eliminates the need for a traditional calendering process, streamlining the manufacturing process while maintaining the high-quality standards necessary for producing high-performance tires.
Adopting Steelastic’s calenderless tire production has several advantages. This technology enables a more efficient and cost-effective production process, enabling manufacturers to meet increasing market demands for high-performance tires while reducing manufacturing costs. Additionally, the calenderless approach ensures consistent quality, minimizing variations in performance and improving overall product reliability. The result is a superior tire with enhanced radial stiffness, greater pressure retention and improved safety, all made possible through Steelastic’s expertise and innovative tire manufacturing solutions.
Bead Apex
The bead-apex of a tire is another important element to ensure performance and safety. High tensile-strength steel wire in the bead-apex is used to seal the rim, stabilize the sidewall and ultimately, improve vehicle handling. By effectively sealing the tire to the rim, the bead-apex helps to maintain proper tire pressure, preventing air leakage and ensuring optimal handling and stability. Beyond rim sealing, these components also contribute to sidewall stability – a critical factor in vehicle handling.
Having the right equipment is crucial for achieving precise and reliable bead and apex manufacturing. At Steelastic, our Apex System is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of high-performance tire manufacturing, and it can even be customized to fit into your tire production line. With our knowledge and advanced technology, we can assist you in efficiently producing a series of top-notch apexed beads in as little as 8 seconds. This means you can keep your tire production line running smoothly, without any interruptions. When you need a thorough bead apex Inspection, try our 360° Bead Apex Inspection System that ensures precise uniformity and defect-free apex beads.
Gum Edging
The gum edging helps minimize friction and heat within the layers of the inner tire material. By reducing these factors, it helps improve the overall durability and longevity of the tire. Gum edging is commonly made of extruded rubber, which offers excellent heat resistance properties.
For tire manufacturers in search of equipment to manufacture high-performance tires, Steelastic offers a specialized solution – the Gum Edging machine. This machine can be purchased separately or seamlessly integrated into an existing rubber extrusion line.
Tire Sidewall
The tire sidewall improves safety by providing abrasion and UV resistance, protecting the tire from wear and sun damage. It also contributes to curbside impact protection, ensuring that the tire remains durable and resilient when encountering obstacles on the road. The sidewall material is commonly made of extruded rubber for its flexibility, strength and impact resistance.
For tire manufacturers looking to manufacture high-performance tires, the Steelastic Rubber Extrusion System is the ideal production equipment for passenger tires, truck and bus tires, aircraft tires and more.
Belt
The belt component of a tire provides lateral, circumferential and radial stiffness to the tire to make it easy to handle and responsive. It also contributes to the overall durability of the tire, making it suitable for high-speed driving. The belt is commonly made of steel cords, usually arranged in two or three layers.
Traditionally, the tire calendering process has been used for producing tire belts. But at Steelastic, we’re driven by innovation. We’re proud to have created a calenderless tire component production system. As the preferred choice for tire manufacturers, we help them achieve superior performance and safety for high-quality tires.
Cap-Ply
When it comes to durability and performance, the cap-ply tire component is crucial. Commonly made of materials like nylon and aramid, the cap-ply provides strength and resilience to the tire, allowing it to withstand high speeds and prolonged use.
At Steelastic, we’re proud to support tire manufacturers with the Cap Strip Systems you need to manufacture cap-ply with precision and efficiency. With the help of our Cap Strip System, tire manufacturers can enhance productivity and efficiency with a lower cost investment than alternative cap-ply systems.
Tread
Tire tread is arguably the most important material that ensures safety on the road. At Steelastic, we simplify the tread-making process with our Rubber Extrusion System, specially designed for exact and effective tread production. Steelastic’s Extruder ensures optimal manufacturing output, resulting in high-quality treads that meet the demands for improved tire performance, efficiency and safety.
Contact the Tire Experts
If you’re looking to improve your tire production, in terms of quality, efficiency or overall profitability, it’s time to contact your friends at Steelastic. Reach out today!