Tire Technology Expo 2020 - News & views

In the TTE exhibition halls, displays can be broadly divided into categories that showcase advances in the areas of tire manufacturing processes, control & automation technologies and materials science. 

Tire processes

Mesnac has upgraded its passenger car tire building machine for sizes between 13in and 24in. The MERTC P-PRO2 can support fully automated tire production, more control over the production process than before, improved data collection and smart maintenance.

The MERTC PRO-VIS visual inspection system is said to ensure the uniformity of building drums and that tire components are placed correctly. It can also monitor tire component width, tire component splicing, bead position and green tire uniformity.

HF TireTech Group will present an innovation in the field of splice-measuring, which is claimed to offer the precision needed to take tire-production to the next level.

The HF Q Guard “sets new benchmarks in precise splice measuring, quality control & traceability,” said a statement from the Hamburg tire machinery company. (Read more)

Finnish group Cimcorp will show how its Dream Factory hardware and software system can interconnect processes throughout a tire plant.

Material flow – from the mixing machines to the finished tire warehouse – is controlled by a warehouse control system, while Cimcorp’s MES covers tracing of production data, recipe management and reporting.

Cimcorp displays will feature robots designed specifically for the tire industry and Dream Factory modules that support partial automation at brownfield sites through to full greenfield automation.

The automation can be implemented on a single production line at a time to allow for a gradual transition, the company also pointed out.

Comerio Ercole will feature the Hydroshot technology included in the Hydroplus device of its calender units. It is designed to deliver significant quality improvements via micrometric control of the coupling between steel or textile cords and the rubber layers. (Read more)

Turkish machinery maker Uzer Makina will launch a new cross-placed floating-column hydraulic press for TBR tires at this year’s Hanover show.

The curing press is said to be much lighter and more compact than existing frame-type designs. Features include a patented floating column technology, automatic mould-height adjustment, a locking mechanism that cannot jam and low cycle time.

The company will also announce a new, 59in size of floating-column-type hydraulic press for SUV tires, and a compact cross-placed hydraulic post-curing inflator.

4JET Technologies will focus on issues around the sensitivity of tire inner liners to damage during cleaning as well as the challenges of marking many different tire types.

For these applications, 4JET will explain how its pre-processing laser cleaning has minimal impact on the inner liner along with the effectiveness of its post-curing marking systems.

This year sees the 75th anniversary of VMI, which was founded by Jan de Lange as Veluwse Machine Industrie in 1945. In Hanover, the company will highlight how its tire-manufacturing systems can be customised to highly specific production requirements.

Together with its 1600 employees, VMI said it is focused on bringing “our industries to the next level by providing state-of-the-art innovative technology.”

Pelmar Engineering will lead on the importance of accurate and repeatable weighing of chemicals and additives to tire production.

In this space, its Color Service unit has developed a fully automatic dosing system that eliminates manual weighing.

The system produces bags and marks them with all key information. It then weighs and doses the chemicals into the bags and seals them so that they can be delivered to the mixer platform or directly to the mixers.

All steps are recorded and can be tracked through a digital interface, so data can be easily analysed or shared.

Micro-Epsilon will highlight a complete tire-inspection system, said to check the entire surface in less than a second – using three laser scanners to measure the surface profile of tires.

The turnkey tester is said to be particularly suitable for use at the end of a production line, where each tire is automatically examined for dents and bulges, and returned to the production line.

In addition to its range of slitter-rewinders and spooling machines, Calemard – the converting equipment division of Spoolex – will present patented in-line continuous processes and loading, conveying and unloading solutions.

Extrusion systems major Troester is offering an extended range of standard and custom-designed systems for extrusion and calendering of tire components at Tire Tech Expo 2020, to be held 25-27 Feb in Hanover. (Read more)

Features on the company’s stand will include Unishaft, which is designed to optimise handling between large tire slitter-rewinder and spooling machines and eliminate manual handling.

Factory automation

In the area of control and automation, Siemens will present technologies for the digitisation of tire factories: optimising plant transparency and availability as well as time-to-market within new business models.

The company’s integrated software, automation technologies and energy-management systems are designed to cover the entire lifecycle of factory assets.

In Hanover, Siemens team will explain how digitisation allows better data analysis, which can ultimately lead to the optimisation of production processes.

Bosch Rexroth will showcase its new ctrlX automation platform solutions, claimed to be the most open automation platform on the market.

It uses a Linux real-time operating system, open standards, app programming technology, web-based engineering and a “comprehensive” IoT connection.

A virtual ctrlX system environment is available, enabling programming without hardware, added Bosch, which claims that the platform can cut engineering time and effort by 30-50%.

BST eltromat will present enhanced function modules for PROSolutions – a structured visualisation and operating platform for quality assurance in tire manufacturing.

Designed to create a closed quality assurance process, the technology links the whole system with a joint user interface and offers enhanced operating convenience.

Due to its modular structure, PROSolutions can be configured flexibly to monitor calenders, extruders, cutting units, pre-assembly, tire building and other machines and present details on a mobile touchscreen device.

Pepperl+Fuchs will display its Sensorik 4.0 intelligent sensors, designed to enable tire manufacturers to leverage data across all information levels.

The company’s smart field devices, such as proximity switches and photoelectric sensors, facilitate entire track & trace of automated material flow; complete documentation of production; and plant-wide condition monitoring.

Materials science

Among the materials companies at Tire Tech, Schill & Seilacher will highlight new reactive polymeric plasticisers called Struktol HT 815 and 820 as alternatives to castor oil – widely used in most tire-curing bladders.

The plasticisers are said to exhibit low volatility and minimal migration from the bladder during extended service, thereby improving resistance to flex-cracking.

The products also deliver superior flex fatigue resistance without compromising tension-set properties, according to the supplier.

Lanxess will present the latest developments from its Rhein Chemie business unit, including within its Rhenodiv range of release agents.

These, it said, include “single-release tire-inside lubes; multiple-release inside lubes and bladder coatings, outside and finishing paints, and tire marking paints.”

Lanxess will also spotlight the latest developments in its range of tire curing bladders for PCR, TBR and OTR tires.

A focus for Behn Meyer Europe at this year’s Tire Technology Expo will be surface-modified silica for optimised processing and best properties of silica tire compounds.

This technology is said to boost compound wear performance by 10-15% without compromising other important properties such as wet skid and rolling resistance.

The new development, said Behn Meyer, paves the way to “silica compounding with near to no VOC generation and the lowest-possible energy use.”

The Rütgers brand of Rain Carbon will present its development of “highly compatible” pure monomer resins for improved wear and rolling resistance.

The company will also showcase new Novares pure ‘water-white’ resins, including low-polar aliphatic resins based on hydrogenated C9 and DCPD polymers.

The products are said to allow rubber compound solutions and to work particularly well with dried liquid low-molecular-weight resins.

Momentive will major on its advanced coupling agents, which can lower rolling resistance and wear without impacting tire grip or handling.

The company claims that formulations using its silanes show enhanced processability and a better balance between rolling resistance, wet grip and wear resistance than typical S2 and S4 silanes.

To further highlight the company’s expertise, a Momentive researcher will give a presentation on the role of silica-cluster morphology in coupling-agent chemistry at the TTE conference.

Kraton Chemical will highlight the performance of a new Sylvatraxx tread enhancement additive (TEA), in silica-modified passenger car tire treads.

The recently launched 8000 series was developed to optimise the balance between wet traction and rolling resistance, especially in silica-modified passenger car tire treads.

This second-generation poly-terpene TEA technology offers a pinene-based alternative to limonene-based products – meeting demands for both economic sustainability and safe, environmentally responsible performance.

Specifically designed to help meet renewability targets, the new TEAs are certified as 100% bio-based.

Black Bear Carbon will highlight the performance of its TR30 and TR35 carbon black (rCB) grades, each with a total inorganic content of 16-18%, of which the silica content is around 6-8%. PAH content is kept below 20ppm by a dual-stage pyrolysis process.

The STSA surface areas and structure of both products are said to be similar to the values of furnace-grade N329 carbon black – though intrinsic differences in chemistry, size distribution and surface energy mean a performance closer to N660.

Black Bear will explain how by pre-sorting tires with similar chemical compositions and tightly controlling the second stage of pyrolysis it can ensure medium-to-high mechanical reinforcement with “outstanding” dynamic properties.