Flexible tire building cells

• Flexibel Tire Building Cells: Modular tire manufacturing (MTM) systems
• Baldwin flexible breaker maker servicer systems   
• Robot tire handling equipment

Highest quality and lowest manufacturing cost per tire

VMI has developed a line of tire assembly systems capable of producting a large range of passenger car, light truck, all steel truck & bus and other tires in various sizes, conforming to TRA and ETRO standards. These machines enable tire manufacturers to meet today's demand for high quality tires at competitive costs. They include automatic measuring, cutting, and positioning of the various components, dynamic breaker positioning, fast size change, automatic green tire removel and machine performance monitoring. With these and other features VMI provides it's customers the highest quality and lowest manufacturing cost per tire.

Sub systems of the tire building machines decribed hereafter are available to boost performance or existing older tire building machines.

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Flexibel Tire Building Cells: Modular tire manuacturing (MTM) systems

The continuing trend for smaller series of tires is out of step with the industry’s traditional tire manufacturing process. This is exactly why VMI brings to the industry the revolutionary solution: Modular Tire Manufacturing (MTM). This completely self-contained tire building cell has been developed by us solely and its capacity and durability demonstrated by applying proven technology in prototypes.

The MTM cell gives the ultimate flexibility to respond at short notice to the demands of the car industry for different types and sizes of specialized tires. MTM produces tires of higher quality and at a lower cost per tire than possible in traditional large-scale tire building on high volume machinery from stock piled components. One of the biggest advantage is that the MTM cell eliminates complex planning and logistics required in conventional tire production plants, which are geared to high volume production in a sequence of multiple process steps and thus require large buffer capacity after each process step.
 

The picture shows a robot for automatic bead loading and green tire removal.

VMI’s MTM cell is a completely self-contained unit for tire building and includes all process steps from rubber components and reinforcement, green tire manufacture, curing, finishing to quality control. The output is a fully finished tire ready to mount on the rim. The MTM cell incorporates the very latest in tire building technology to produce consistent, uniform tires of the highest quality, at a high speed and at the lowest possible cost per tire. In its flexibility, the MTM cell is able to produce 1200 radial tires per day for a bead range from 14" to 22" in different sizes for passenger cars, SUV’s and light trucks, as well for high performance, ultra high performance and run flat technology. This all in both small and large volumes.

The cell is configured around a highly flexible tire building machine, including a set of six dual cavity curing presses and the cell controller that individually programs each tire to be built. The controller is programmable for automatic change of width and outside diameter of the tire. Up to 12 different tire sizes can be produced concurrently without manual intervention or loss of cycle time.

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Baldwin flexible breaker maker servicer systems

When VMI developed their Modular Tire Manufacturing (MTM) cell, we realized that some of the modules could be used for upgrading existing tire building machines, giving them extra flexibility. Besides new tooling for assembling the B&T package, or assembling the carcass components, we developed a complete range of direct extrusion systems for manufacturing of breaker, or body ply strips, as well as compound strip winders for winding of side wall and tread compounds. The automatic bead apex production line, and automatic handling of bead apex components and green tire removal can transform the existing VMI248-SL and VMI348 tire building machine into a totally hands-off production unit.

One of the most revolutionary developments is the Baldwin 2x30, a flexible breaker maker servicer system. The Baldwin 2x30 can be delivered as a stand-alone breaker servicer for the VMI family of radial passenger tire assembling machine a VMI248-SL or VMI348-S, or other brand tire building machines. The breaker maker comprises a creel let-off, gear pump extruder with cross-head die for two strips, cooling drums, cutting positioning unit and the servicer with the application conveyors. From each strip of 30 mm a breaker can be produced with a pre-defined width, angle and length. The breaker maker is so flexible that when another angle and or width is required the change-over time is of negligible.

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Robot Tire Handling Equipment

We can offer robot tire handling solutions to improve the efficiency of the bead room. From simple loading and unloading systems to robotic storage and identifications systems.

These pictures show robots for automatic bead loading and green tire removal.

Features:

• Buffering and transport (Cartridge)
• Unloading cartridge
• Bead loading
• Green tire removal

For more information please see our brochures or contact us sales@vmi-group.com