It takes one hour to recycle 4 lorry or wagon tires (65 kg). For skillful workers the operation on recycling one tire takes 5 minutes, so this machine can either make work-pieces during 5-6 hrs or fills the whole warehouse and then it can stay idle for 2-3 days. After that the tires are loaded to tire-to-band cutting machine. Average recycling time for 1 tire on this machine is not available, usually there many cuts on the used tires, these cuts often result in breakages, after it the band has to be loaded again. Besides, the speed of operation is affected by the band’s width. Standard with is 3 cm however, it is possible to make it 2 cm, as a results, it takes more time. The band width can be also 5 cm, this affords to save time but increases power inputs in abrasion.

 

In practice, the machine operator determines the optimal band width proceeding from its condition and wear.

 

The tire is cut into bands up to the second tire bead seat. The resultant band is loaded manually to work-piece cut machine. The machine operates in automatic mode and depending on the band width and thickness it can recycle 350-400 kg of band/hr. (4-6 wagon tires). In normal organizational management, the productivity of these three machines is twice as much as that of the abrasive machine, so they can be used 6-7hs/day, whereas the abrasive machine works 22-23 hrs/day. Tire bead seats are manually loaded to metal extruding machine, and the latter recycles them automatically. The tire bead seats are to be loaded one by one. It takes 2-4 minutes for the machine to recycle the tire bead seat, depending on amount of the rubber on it and on skill of the operator of the tire bead seat cutting machine (less rubber –less recycle time). Time of recycling also depends on tire bead seat diameter and metal structure. If the metal part consists of steel wire as a single rod of 10-15 width, the recycling takes more time. If it is a braid of thin wires it takes less time to separate the tire bead seat from the rubber. Work-pieces from the cutter and rubber from tire bead seat go to the main conveyer of the abrasive machine and drop between the rollers of the abrasive drums via the feed roll. The productivity of one abrasive machine – 2-3 tons/shift (10 hrs). In theory it takes 10-12 min to recycle one tire. No time measurements for one tire recycling have been performed as each operation is individual.

 

As differed from the Italian techniques, fed raw materials are not weighted and/or batched. We can do it by the Customer’s order but it will make the whole line much more expensive. The rubber from the rollers go to the rough vibration screen to be separated into two fractions. Large pieces go to the feeding conveyor to be sent to the secondary treatment. Small fraction is determined by the Customer by installing the sieve of the required diameter. As a rule, standard diameter of the sieve used at a factory doesn’t exceed 8 mm. This fraction is usually fed by conveyor to the fine vibration sieve. This vibration sieve divides the fraction into two parts: 1) Finished products – the size is determined by the Customer by installing the vibration sieve with required diameter of holes. Air separator removes textile cord from the final fraction. After that the final fraction go via conveyors to magnetic separator with permanent non-electric magnets, removing textile cord. After that the finished product is fed to bag-packing. Large fraction that did not pass fine sieves goes to the rollers for the secondary treatment. The main abrasive machine, being adjusted properly, removes 99.5% of metal cord..

When the tires recycled passed preliminary treatment, all the textile cord (100%) is removed. In case when the tires recycled are made in Japan, PR China, “Michelin” tires, or the tires are made in Krasnoyarsk (Russia) where textile cord is alloyed into rubber by hot method, then after abrasive machine there are some strings that can be seen in fine fraction. In this case textile cord containing products go to additional attritor. Its average productivity is 100 kg/hr. This machine removes the textile cord completely from any type of the rubber. This very machine can recycle on its own aircraft tires, car tires, hoses and other types of rubber that contains no metal cord. No work-pieces or metal containing materials can be allowed as this will result in quick failure of cast-iron disks (3-4 days). If there’s no problem with textile cord, this very machine can be used for grinding final fraction into powder, this can increase the productivity by 500- 600 kg/shift. Air separator, included in the production line has the power allowing to take the textile cord from vibration sieve and additional attrition simultaneously.