A green tire is simply a tire that has all the parts put together but has not been cured or had the treads added to them yet. There is a surprisingly lengthy process to tire production. Before the tire can be created, a mix of rubber, oil and additives must be mixed together. Once the mixture is the right consistency, the mixture will be moved throughout other machines to be made into the individual parts of the tire. The individual pieces consisting of an inner rubber liner, the plies, the belts, the bead, the sidewall and the tread meet back up on the tire building machine and is pressed together to create the tire shape we are familiar with.
Once that beginning process is finished, we’ve got a green tire. The green tire will then be placed in a mold and taken to be cured. A green tire is placed inside a large mold for the curing process which consists of the tire being inflated and heated to get the proper shape and tread. During the curing process the green tire is heated up about 300 degrees to bond each element. The curing process depends on the size of the tire and can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an entire day.
This is the end of green tires. Anything after the curing process is a cured tire and goes through inspection and then is ready to be used. UMD offers sorters for green and cured tires. Our DARB Sorters utilize non-contact diverter technology to avoid the potential alteration in green tire uniformity that can occur with standard sortation equipment.