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What’s complex about a tire?
That’s just the trouble. If all you see is the outside, a tire looks pretty simple. In fact, you’d almost think you could make them like angel food cakes.
Unlike angel food cakes, though, tires are literally “built,” from parts.
How many parts?
The average truck tire has at least 16 or more components, each of which may be made of several parts. Several different kinds of steel. Lots of different types and compounds of rubber.
And the tire is “built,” not “poured.”
What do you mean by built?
We’re going to take a separate article in this series to cover the tire building process, because right now, we want to focus on the many “parts” that go into a tire.
Think about your arm. There are several layers of skin on the outside, then muscles, fat, sinew and cartilage, together with blood vessels and nerves, all surrounding bones with marrow inside them.
In a tire, you have different rubber compounds surrounding other rubber compounds, surrounding steel wire and steel cable, with maybe a bit of polyester fabric as well.
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| Besides calendering, the other main way tire components are made is by extrusion. |
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Where do all these parts come from?
Each has to be made, then brought to the “tire builder.” In fact, when you look at a tire factory, it’s amazing how much space, how many machines and how many people it takes to make the parts that one person will assemble into a tire.
Most of the parts of a tire are made using either calendering (squeezing things between giant steel rollers), or by extrusion (squeezing rubber through dies that impart their shape to the components).
Let’s take a look at a tire, and see how some of these parts are made. |
