Millions, if not billions of tyres are in action across the globe every single day, but have you ever considered how exactly these incredibly important motoring products are actually manufactured?
Tyres perform the vital task of protecting the wheels of vehicles from the surfaces across they travel and are essential in getting you from A to B.
Rather than being constructed from one single material, tyres are constructed from a complex combination of a number of different compounds and feature more components that you would probably expect.
There are 4 key parts to the tyre manufacturing process that take a tyre from raw material to road ready and in this article we will look at each in a bit more detail.
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Stage 1 – Compound Acquisition
The first stage of the tyre manufacturing process is the acquisition of the raw materials required by the tire manufacturing company.
Just some of the ingredients that are required for this programme include the steel used for steel belts and for steel belts, the chemicals required to create synthetic rubber and the surface dressings used to maximise grip and keep wear to a minimum.
Tyres are made from a combination of both natural and synthetic rubber with the natural rubber being taken from trees grown in specific plantations.
Most manufacturers have their own unique recipes for tyre creation with each using up to 12 different rubber compounds.
Stage 2 – Manufacturing
Once all the individual ingredients have been acquired, the manufacturing process can begin in earnest.
Firstly, steel wire is embedded within the rubber to create one sheet that is then cut to the required size.
The outer layer of rubber is blended and mixed before being kneaded into the tread required to provide grip on the road. This rubber is then cooled by immersion and cut into the tyre length needed.
Other important parts of this complex process include the embedding of textiles, the insertion of a stead bead and the extrusion of the sidewall.
Stage 3 – Tyre production
Now all the materials have been combined into rubber of the required length and composition, it is time for the job of forming the tyre itself to begin. First of all, the existing rubber is placed onto a tyre building machine that created the casing and the tread of the tyre.
After that, a fluid is applied to the ‘tyre’ that prepares it to be vulcanised and for the tyres to be completed.
Stage 4 Vulcanisation
Vulcanisation involves forming the nearly finished tyre into its final form, ie the one that you will install on your car. This is achieved by exposing the tyre to an appropriate pressure and temperature that engraves both the tread pattern and sidewall markings onto the surface of the tyre itself.
