Compared with the car as a whole, tires are not very eye-catching, but the importance of tires to vehicles, like shoes to people, cannot be underestimated. Understanding our tire manufacturing process will help to strengthen your trust in the Goodyear brand.

Process 1: Mixing process

The internal mixing process is the process of mixing carbon black, natural/synthetic rubber, oil, additives, accelerators and other raw materials together and processing them in an internal mixer to produce a "rubber". All raw materials must be tested before entering the internal mixer and can be used after being released. The weight of each pot of the internal mixer is approximately 250 kg. The rubber used for each rubber component in the tire has specific properties. The composition of the rubber compound depends on the performance requirements of the tire. At the same time, the change of the rubber composition also depends on the needs of the supporting manufacturers and the market, which mainly come from the requirements of traction, driving performance, road conditions and the tires themselves. All the rubber materials must be tested before entering the next process-the preparation process of the rubber parts, and can enter the next process after being released.

Process two: plastic parts preparation process

The preparation process of rubber parts includes 6 main sections. In this process, all the semi-finished rubber components that make up the tire will be prepared, some of which are preliminarily assembled. The 6 sections are:

Part One: Extrusion

The rubber material is fed into the extruder head to extrude different semi-finished rubber parts: tread, sidewall/split and apex.

Part Two: Calendering

The raw material cord passes through the calender and a thin layer of rubber is hung on both sides of the cord. The final product is called "cord". The raw material cords are mainly nylon and polyester.

Part Three: Bead Forming

Beads are made by winding many steel wires with glue. The rubber used for the bead has special properties. After vulcanization, the rubber and the steel wire can be closely attached together.

Part Four: Curtain Cutting

In this process, the cord will be cut to a suitable width and the joint will be connected. The change of the width and angle of the cord mainly depends on the specifications of the tire and the requirements of the tire structure design.

Part 5: Pasting Apex

In this process, the apex extruded by the extruder will be manually attached to the bead. Apex tape plays an important role in the handling of tires.

Part 6: Belt forming

This process is to produce the belt layer. In the spindle room, many steel wires come out through the threading plate, and then pass through the die plate at the same time as the rubber material, so that the steel wires are glued on both sides. After hanging the glue, the belt layer is cut into a prescribed angle and width. The width and angle depend on the tire specifications and the requirements of structural design.

All the rubber parts will be transported to the "tire building" process, ready for tire building use.

Process three: tire building process

The tire building process is to assemble all the semi-finished products on the forming machine into a green tire. The green tire here means that it has not been vulcanized. After the green tire is inspected, it is transported to the vulcanization process.

Process four: vulcanization process

The green tire is installed on the vulcanizing machine and vulcanized into a finished tire after proper time and proper conditions in the mold. The vulcanized tire has the appearance of the finished tire—pattern/font and tread pattern. Now, the tire will be sent to the final inspection area.

Process five: final inspection process

In this area, tires must first undergo visual appearance inspection and then uniformity inspection. The uniformity inspection is completed by the "uniformity testing machine". The uniformity testing machine mainly measures radial force, lateral force, cone force and fluctuation. After the uniformity test is completed, a dynamic balance test is required. The dynamic balance test is completed on the "dynamic balance test machine". Finally, the tire has to go through X-ray inspection, and then shipped to the finished product warehouse for shipment

Process 6: Tire Test

In the process of designing new tire specifications, a large number of tire tests are necessary to ensure that the tire performance meets the requirements of the government and supporting factories.

After the tires are officially put into production, we will continue to do tire tests to monitor the quality of the tires. These tests are the same as those done when new tires are released. The machine used to test tires is a "mileage test", and the usual tests include high-speed tests and endurance tests.

The production process of tires is like a chain. Each process must meet the requirements of the next process to ensure that our products ultimately meet the needs of customers. This is always our aim!