MANUFACTURING FABRIC TYRES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 72, 8 March 1930, Page 13

MANUFACTURING FABRIC TYRES

There are probably as many d’ffcront ideas un how tyres are made as there arc people who havo never hud the opportunity of making a trip through a factory. The production manager of the Goodyear .Tyre ana Rubber gives the following rough sketch of the production of a tyre.— 1. Rubber arrives at the factory in smoked sheets. These are taken and, by a process of washing be tween steel rollers, freed from impurities and broken up into a spongy mass. The rubber is rhen dried, mixed with other compounds, and thoroughly kneaded between the heated steel rolls of a "rubber mill." Tho rubber is row readv for calendering. 2. The fabric is tested for imperfections and when passed goes to the ironer—here it is passed between many heated rolls to prepare it for calendering. 3. Both the rubber and fabric are now worked together into a fabric by the process of calendering—that is both the rubber and the fabric arc passed together through heavy rolls which force the rubber into tht fabric. 4. The compounded fabric is then cut with a bias cutter which cuts it "on the bias" so that the cords in the fabric run at an angle giving added strength in tyro construction. 5. Tho tyre-builder now takes these bias strips and from them builds up the carcass of the tyre on an iron core by te aid of machinery fin ishing oft' however by hand. 0. The constructed tyre tthen goes to the curing room for vulcanisation where it is placed in a steel mould in which the design of the tread is cut. The whole mould is then lowered into the heaters where steam heat and hydraulic pressure weld the mass of rubber fabric into the finished tyre. The final inspection then passes the tyre for marketing.