Gerard Nijman

Gerard has a track record in the tire industry of more than 35 years. He started as an extrusion process engineer at Vredestein, a Dutch tire manufacturer, and has held various positions in the field of tire and rubber article manufacturing technology. Since 2017 Gerard has been at KraussMaffei Extrusion in Hannover, Germany, as head of process engineering for tire component extrusion lines. He also is a lecturer at the Leibniz University Hannover, the University of Twente in Nl-Enschede and the DIK German Rubber Institute. He has published more than 10 papers and holds 17 patents.

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Presentation

Data acquisition and process analysis in a multiplex extrusion line

To be able to produce tire components which contain 5 compounds a co-extrusion aggregate containing 5 extruders combined in 1 common extrusion head is needed. Because of short production runs and the wide variety of products to be produced very short tooling exchange times are needed. Moreover very short start up lengths are required to prevent scrap generation. Data acquisition can help the process engineer to better understand and analyze the extrusion process of tire components. A state of the art quintoplex extrusion head for the production of tire components is presented and examples of process data analysis will be presented. Due to the continuous development of (especially) tread compounds, where the tendency is there that compounds do not conduct electric current anymore, a conductive path needs to be provided in a profile so that eventually static electricity can be discharged from the vehicle to the road pavement. This electric path through the profile, sometimes also called a chimney, can be included by means of a 6th extruder which is integrated into the co-extrusion head. To be sure that conductivity is there a conductivity checking device can be integrated in the downstream line immediately behind the extrusion head.