Future Tire Profiles - Uzer Makina

Ahead of this year's Future Tire Conference, being help 27-28 June in Cologne, ERJ is running a series of profiles and interviews with some of the leading players in the tire & rubber machinery sector. Here, we profile Turkish company  Uzer Makina, an increasingly prominent player in ERJ;s annual survey of rubber and tire machinery makers:

Uzer Makina is mainly focused on tire curing process and serves tire manufacturers in Turkey, Europe, the US, Middle East, Far East and Russia and Ukraine , India and Japan. The company, which has its production base in Izmit, Turkey, also makes container mechanisms and tire moulds.

Business growth and new projects in 2016 and 2017 largely reflect a widening of Uzer Makina's mechanical and hydraulic press portfolio.

Since starting press production almost 20 years ago, the company has delivered more than 600 sets of curing presses worldwide.  These include 350 tire curing press employing a patented ‘floating column’ feature to eliminate mould-height adjustment equipment and processes.

Used for passenger and light truck tire sizes from 45” to 52”, floating column hydraulic presses can replace existing smaller size mechanical presses on the same factory footprint.

Beside floating column type press for passenger and light-truck tires, Uzer Makina has developed a frame-type hydraulic curing press as well in 65” and  67” sizes with double cavity for truck and bus tire (TBR) manufacturing.

Smarter curing

According to Uzer Makina, curing presses are becoming smarter and more flexible in response to moves to increase the number of tire sizes and types in a tire plant. Efficiency, meanwhile, has top priority: energy efficiency and machine efficiency, though these features that must also be linked to safety.

‘Automation is a must for a tire curing press with automatic loading and unloading abilities needed to reduce dry-cycle time and increasing machine efficiency, which determines the number of curing presses tire makers employ in often limited curing areas,’ the Turkish manufacturer said.

‘Decreasing the overall dead-time – set-up time , dry-cycle time, cycle (curing) time itself – increases output of a curing press and can reduce the number of machines required. So features, such as automated mould-height adjustment and mould change capabilities are important,’ it added.

Machines should also be designed and equipped to minimise both maintenance requirements and energy consumption. Isolation and also an advanced hydraulic power unit are very important for less energy consumption, as are flexible curing capabilities especially for some special sizes with only one mould or curing the last green tire available at the end of the lot. This means having a press with an Independent cavity, like a single-cavity press.

Moreover, it is essential to keep the press running without sacrificing safety – a critical requirement which can be met by using advanced safety concepts such as safety fences, area scanners and safety controllers.

Tire labelling

Tire labelling is mandatory in the European market right now and it will become popular in other regions as well. This fact leads tire manufacturers to use PCI (post-cure inflation) units just behind of curing presses to achieve better values on the labels; it means to equip the curing press with an advanced two-stage PCI Units.

Most of Uzer Makina’s clients have started to use PCI units for cooling the tire under pressure after the curing cycle. This operation assures better uniformity values and, hence, better rolling resistance.

Uzer Makina also manufactures tire curing moulds, container mechanisms and bladders moulds.

The company has adopted a direct milling method in five-axis CNC machines as its main tire mould manufacturing method, which is backed by CAD and CAM software for tire mould design. A focus here is to reduce the time for producing moulds and manufacturing times for first moulds have been reduced to around four-to-six weeks.

Bladder moulds are also important products for Uzer Makina. From smaller size BOM bladders to large AF bladders, the company has the capability to produce hundreds of bladder moulds. Furthermore, it delivers up to 30 sets of container mechanisms a month to tire manufacturers in Europe, North America and South America.