Como é FEITO o PNEU #Boravê

Today we are going to discover how a tire is made. We arrived at a factory in Santo André, near São Paulo, where more than 20,000 tires are produced per day. And I'm just letting you know that if you think a tire is just a piece of rubber, you're wrong. There are dozens of pieces that must fit together to form it. Let's find out. Here we have a perfect tire cut. You will see that it is much more technological than it seems. It can start up to three years before launch and each part is designed with the car the tire will be used on in mind.

And it has many pieces, each one made of a different material, a different rubber so that everything works as it should. I'll start by explaining from the outside in, okay? The part that touches the ground is called the tread. It is primarily made of rubber and this is where the tire tread design comes into play. It is this part that will guarantee the grip of the tire on the track, especially if it is wet. Then the body ply will tie everything together, which we can identify here by this steel line running all the way through the tire.

In the innermost part we will have several steel wires that form the cord. It is very important to give this internal part a lot of firmness and ensure that the tire does not come loose from the wheel. And finally, on the inside we will have the interior lining, which is a rubber that guarantees watertightness. In the past, tires had tubes. Nowadays, the most modern ones no longer have it, it is this layer of rubber that will act as an air chamber. And look, I'm simplifying a lot, here there are a number of other parts that are super important, like the sidewall of the tire that has to be very resistant when you scrape the curb, for example.

The main raw material of tires is rubber. This is natural rubber, which comes from latex, from the rubber tree. It even smells... very different. But tires also use synthetic rubber, which is derived from petroleum. The proportion between the two will depend on the type of material they want to produce, but that is not all. Tire rubber will have several other additives. One of the main ones is carbon black, it is a petroleum derivative that gives the rubber more resistance and is what gives the tires their black color. If it weren't for carbon black, the tires could be a different color.

Another important ingredient is silica, it is one of the main components of sand. Silica can give tires better rolling resistance, which will make the car consume less fuel, for example. Now a very important ingredient is going to enter, which is sulfur. It will considerably increase the resistance of natural rubber. Normally rubber is sticky, it breaks easily, sulfur will modify this property. It is now mixed, but will only act a little later in a process called vulcanization. All this raw material will end up in a giant blender, called a banbury. It will sting and heat all of this up.

In the next step, this will be thrown between two huge cylinders and the final product will be this rubber blanket, called master rubber. And now, that rubber mat, the sulfur, and some other additives will go back into that giant blender, all mixed together to form a new rubber mat. And this is an internal raw material that will be used in the manufacturing of the tire. The consistency of this intermediate rubber here is quite strange. It makes you want to take a bite. These rubber blankets will take several different paths here within the factory. Here, for example, it is heated and then squeezed in a calender to form the tire seal, the inner liner, that little layer that serves as the old tube.

The width of this belt here depends on the tire that will be produced. You can see that there in the corner it is being cut and the rest is going up. This right here will melt and turn back into this rubber. Look at this giant coil of wire, it is used to produce the bead, which is that steel structure that goes inside the tire and fits on the wheel. The machine will roll it and then mix it with gum. See how it looks. One of the most interesting processes you will see in this video is the creation of the tread layer, the innermost part of the tire that already has steel cords.

They're even coming out of these giant reels here. Look how beautiful! All these threads will be organized, you can see that everything here is very well organized. Then they will also go into a calendar. In this machine, that sheet of rubber that we saw will come in already hot and form a kind of sandwich, it will be the bread and the steel will be the filling. Here you can see the material coming out ready. Really warm. This material still needs to cool and then it will be wrapped with nylon sheet. You have to do it this way, because if you didn't put the fabric on, the rubber could stick.

We are now in one of the processes that consumes the most rubber, the manufacturing of the tread, which is the part of the tire that touches the ground. Here they are heating and mixing those blankets we saw being produced. They then go to a triple extruder. It works like a syringe that injects three different materials. All of this will be compressed and molded into a single product. And here we can see the component coming out of the machine hot again. I managed to get a little piece out here, how cool that at this point it is still very sticky and these lines, they told me that the assemblers ask for them.

So if you look at the tire of a new car, you'll probably see a colored line like this. I have only shown the main parts, but a tire can have up to 30 different components. Here everything is ready, it's time to ride. One interesting thing you notice is that the rubber is extremely sticky, so when you tap against each other, it sticks. Some of these materials also received some additives to make them stick better, a kind of glue that is important right now. Assembly is completely automatic, carried out by a robot and starts from the inside out.

So the first piece that goes in here is the interior lining and the rest goes around it. So that the tire is rigid and can receive the rest of the pieces, it will be inflated. Then you gain the tread, the part that touches the ground, and then roll it. They are wheels that work by exerting a lot of pressure so that the rubber sticks. The interesting thing to see here is that all this happens at the same time, so we have to watch it for several minutes to understand what the machine is doing. But don't worry, after all that, the tire is not ready yet.

This is the green tire. If you put your hand on it, you realize it's still soft, sticky, has a weird thing on the side, and doesn't have the tire grooves. Then, it needs to go through the main chemical reaction of tire manufacturing which is vulcanization, at which point the sulfur will take effect. What happens? Rubber molecules are very long and normally slide over each other. When sulfur is added and brought to a high temperature, some bonds are created between the molecules. And then, the rubber becomes firmer and more elastic. The vulcanization will be carried out within this press.

On the outside you can see that there is a mold that already has the shape of the tire grooves. Inside there is a bladder that will be inflated with super hot water and, together with the mold, the vulcanization will take place, which has to be at a very high temperature. So both the bladder and the mold are very hot. On larger tires, like this one, this process can take hours. When I say bladder it gives the impression that it is something soft, spongy... it is not. This here is the bladder, it looks like another tire. Look what beauty!

Now, tires ready. And one thing everyone likes to see on a new tire is those hairs. Where do they come from? When the green tire is vulcanized, there are channels that allow air to escape as the rubber takes shape. A little rubber is also inserted into these channels and this is what will form the hairs. That is, the hair is not expressly placed, it is part of the tire manufacturing process. It was even said that there are countries that don't even like the hair on new tires. But the work continues. Next, the tires will undergo a visual inspection, where they will take the opportunity to remove any burrs that may be left.

Subsequently, all of them will go through an X-ray machine, where the metal structure and the joints between the rubbers can be observed. And then they will go through a machine that measures the distribution of the tire's mass to check that no part weighs more than another and could cause an imbalance in the car. There are a number of other tests that are done by sampling. Here, for example, the tire is rotated for days at maximum load until it bursts, so that they understand where it will break. And, furthermore, in the interior of São Paulo they have an athletics track to test the tire in real life.

To tell the truth, you didn't imagine that you needed so many things to produce a tire. I think it's worth giving it a thumbs up, right?