In the macro background of continuous progress in intelligent manufacturing technology and global carbon reduction and emission reduction, how to further reduce product manufacturing costs, improve product quality and functionality, meet the requirements of green manufacturing and obtain comprehensive advantages in the market competition is a problem that tyre manufacturing enterprises have to solve.
With the development of the times, the tyre industry has become more and more demanding in terms of tyre quality and functionality, paying more and more attention to the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies for cost control and environmental protection in the tyre manufacturing process, and more and more demanding in terms of products meeting market demand. Most tyre manufacturing companies are now planning to build unmanned factories, adopting advanced low-carbon and low-consumption manufacturing processes and a tyre life-cycle traceability management system based on a network cloud platform, with a view to better meeting the new needs of tyre users and bringing value to tyre manufacturing companies and users.
The use of laser technology can effectively reduce the cost of tyre manufacturing processes, reduce CO2 emissions and help tyre companies to meet the market demand for high quality, high performance and versatile tyres.
1. Laser cleaning of tyre moulds
The laser cleaning of tyre moulds requires no consumables, does not damage the moulds and has low energy consumption, low carbon emissions and low noise compared to traditional sand and dry ice cleaning. It can clean all-steel and semi-steel tyre moulds and is particularly suitable for cleaning spring bush moulds that cannot be sand cleaned. Fully automatic laser cleaning of moulds requires no consumables, low energy consumption, less labour and can save tyre companies millions of dollars in cleaning costs each year.
2. Laser cleaning of the inside of tyres
With the increasing requirements for car driving safety and the rising demand for silent tyres for new energy vehicles, self-repairing tyres, silent tyres and other high-end tyres are gradually becoming the first choice for automotive packages. Domestic and foreign tyre enterprises take the production of high-end tyres as the priority development direction of enterprises. There are various technical means to achieve self-repairing and silent tyres. At present, the main method is to coat the inner wall of the tyre with a soft solid gel polymer compound to achieve explosion-proof, puncture-proof and leak-proof functions, while a layer of polyurethane sponge is pasted on the surface of the leak-proof rubber to achieve sound and heat insulation and absorb cavity noise for silent effect.
The application of soft, solid polymer compounds and the application of polyurethane sponges require the pre-cleaning of any residual release agent from the inside of the tyre to ensure that the application is effective. Conventional tyre wall cleaning involves grinding, high-pressure water and chemical cleaning. These cleaning methods not only cause damage to the tyre's innerliner, but also sometimes result in poor cleaning.
Laser cleaning of the tyre inner wall without consumables, no damage to the tyre, fast cleaning speed, good quality consistency, automatic cleaning, no need for traditional grinding of the subsequent chip cleaning and wet cleaning of the latter blowing dry work process. No pollutants are emitted and the laser cleaning is ready for use, making it possible to prepare for the subsequent bonding of silent tyres, self-repairing tyres and self-testing tyres with high quality.
3. Tire laser coding
The use of laser coding on the side of the finished tyre replaces the traditional block printing process, delaying the formation of the sidewall information text pattern until the subsequent inspection and shipping process. Laser coding has the following advantages: to avoid the loss of finished products caused by the wrong block; to avoid the loss of downtime caused by frequent replacement of the week number; to effectively improve the quality of product appearance and eliminate the "flying edge" generated by the gap of the block; barcode or two-dimensional code marking makes the whole life cycle of the product management more aspects of the fast; according to the demand of orders can be flexible The barcode or QR code marker makes product lifecycle management easier and quicker; it allows flexible transfer of tyre sales according to order requirements, reducing inventory and capital backlog.
The laser engraving machine is flexible in terms of engraving content, text, numbers, DOT codes, week numbers, patterns, bar codes, 2D codes, etc. The engraving depth and engraving width can be adjusted as required. The height of the laser head is automatically adjusted according to the tyre specification to ensure the quality of the engraving on all tyre sizes. The laser has the advantages of good beam quality, low power attenuation, long life and high reliability. The laser energy is Gaussian distributed, with low thermal impact, no carbonisation, clear marking and easy identification. Flexible laser coding software can meet the requirements of all kinds of text fonts, dates and numbers, patterns, with a perfect laser coding process database. Laser radiation protection devices and powerful fire protection fume collection and filtration systems are available to protect the health and safety of the operator.
