Adopt digital, intelligent, platform based, and green transformation to promote quality, efficiency, and power changes.

——"Guiding Outline of the 14th Five Year Plan for the Development of the Rubber Industry"
 

On March 21, HG Laser, a subsidiary of HG Technology, participated in the third council of the 10th Tire Branch of China Rubber Industry Association in Qingdao, exchanging and discussing the development status, trends, challenges, innovative development, and other topics of China's tire industry, sharing the application research of laser technology in online cleaning of tire molds, and launching the "Da Lun Series Laser Cleaning Intelligent Equipment" for the tire industry.

Rubber pneumatic tires, as the "feet" of automobiles, are an indispensable part of automobile manufacturing. During the manufacturing process, the appearance of the tires is formed by vulcanization of rubber in the tire mold. The safety, drainage, grip, and driving comfort of the tires are closely related to the mold.

However, after repeated use of the mold, there will be more or less residues of pollutants such as rubber and mold release agent in the patterns and grooves in the mold cavity. After accumulation to a certain extent, it will lead to defects such as irregular surface of the finished tire, resulting in defective or scrap products. Therefore, regular cleaning of the mold is crucial.

The traditional mold cleaning methods mainly include sand blasting or dry ice cleaning, which are widely used in the industry, but their disadvantages are also obvious. For example, sand blasting cleaning can easily damage the surface of the mold cavity, reduce the service life, repeatedly disassemble and affect the mold processing accuracy, and take a long time (4H for a pair of molds); Although dry ice cleaning is highly efficient, deep groove patterns are not cleaned, resulting in dust and noise pollution, and high energy consumption. And neither of them can meet the high requirements of modern tire production processes for energy saving, emission reduction, low carbon, and environmental protection. With the gradual improvement of national environmental protection requirements, some local governments have listed mold sanders as non compliant types of environmental protection.

In recent years, with the development of new energy vehicles, the performance and quality requirements of tires in the consumer market are also increasing. The iterative acceleration of tire structure design and pattern updating has resulted in complex shapes, multiple radians, and angles, as well as minimal mold texture spacing. The difficulty of mold cleaning has increased exponentially.

The "Intelligent Equipment for Laser Cleaning of Tire Molds" independently developed by HG Technology overcomes multiple core components and processes such as lasers cleaning, and visual guidance technology. It is not afraid of "baking" at high temperatures, and "no mold removal" can also sweep away dirt. It can clean a pair of tire molds online as quickly as 45 minutes, effectively solving traditional cleaning methods "Long standby time, repeated disassembly, mold wear, incomplete cleaning, environmental pollution, high energy consumption" and other pain points and difficult issues, thereby reducing the downtime of the curing press, improving production efficiency and tire quality, opening a new era of "low-carbon, automated" tire mold cleaning.

Difficulties in project development and product characteristics

Usage Scenario Compatibility

The layout of vulcanizing machines of different categories varies greatly, with a wide variety of mold specifications and narrow working space.

Accessibility of Laser in Complex Morphology

The depth of the mold groove is uneven, and the cleaning distance, incident angle of the laser beam, moving speed, and focal length require precise control throughout the entire process.

Stability of equipment systems at high temperatures

In the mold opening state, the mold surface temperature is as high as 170 degrees Celsius or above. For optical systems, visual systems, electronic control systems, and other equipment.The reliability and stability requirements of the system are very high.

Driven by the "dual carbon" goal, promoting green production processes and achieving industrial upgrading have become the main development direction of China's tire industry. As a major global tire production and consumption country, China has a broad market prospect for laser cleaning of tire molds.

HG Technology will continue to expand product application scenarios around the main channel of "new energy vehicles and industrial chain", strengthen the research and development and application of "green and low-carbon" technology, and enable the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.

About HGTECH: HGTECH is the pioneer and leader of laser industrial application in China, and the authoritative provider of global laser processing solutions. We have comprehensively arranged laser intelligent machine, measurement and automation production lines, and smart factory construction to provide overall solutions for intelligent manufacturing.