With the rapid development of the automotive industry, the performance requirements of tires are continuously increasing, and the tire structure is also constantly being improved and innovated. In order to adapt to various road surfaces and driving scenarios, tire patterns are becoming increasingly complex and diverse. Although traditional CNC five-axis processing equipment has high processing accuracy, it is unable to complete the processing of complex patterns, multi-radius, and multi-angle tire molds. Moreover, the subsequent process requires high labor costs, and the tire mold industry is in urgent need of a breakthrough.

Tire molds have strong personalized attributes, which highly align with 3D printing technology. With the increasing maturity of SLA 3D printing technology and SoonSer's decades of experience in the digital industrial market, SoonSer has tailored professional digital 3D printing solutions for the tire mold industry's pain points.

Jincheng Machinery Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jincheng Machinery") is committed to the research, development, production, and sales of precision tire living mold for automobiles in Jiangsu, China. Its tire mold services are provided to major automobile tire production companies worldwide. As a leader in the tire mold industry, Jincheng Machinery introduced a SoonSer large-scale industrial 3D printer, TM-600 Pro, at the end of last year to layout a 3D printing tire mold production line.

Jincheng Machinery's SLA equipment

"Jincheng Machinery has always been at the forefront of the industry, and we were among the first companies to introduce CNC processing equipment. This device has a high printing accuracy and can meet our daily production needs. However, as the industry has evolved and Jincheng has expanded in scale, customer demand has become increasingly diverse, and five-axis equipment has gradually become insufficient for production needs. On one hand, CNC cutting cannot meet the processing needs of complex molds. On the other hand, manually inserting steel sheets by CNC manufacturing requires high cost and consumes a lot of working time. After analyzing production efficiency, labor cost, and other dimensions, we decided to introduce a large-scale SLA industrial 3D printer for production."

Display of the Traditional/3D Printed Tire Mold Manufacturing Process

The design and production of tire mold patterns is a major pain point in the tire mold industry. 3D printing technology effectively addresses this challenge. The 3D printer mainly replaces the first and second stages of traditional mold production - the production of the base mold, which can save the first manual insertion of steel plates. Compared with CNC cutting, 3D printing exhibits three major advantages:

1. It does not have to consider the limitations of CNC processing, and any complex tire mold with three-dimensional data can be printed, increasing the diversity of tire patterns.

2. The 3D-printed mold comes with steel plate data, which allows direct turning of rubber for subsequent processing steps.

3. With traditional CNC processing, the wooden base mold needs to be inserted with steel plates, which requires a lot of manual labor. Using 3D printing, without accounting for labor costs, just the steel plate and wooden material costs for one mold can save nearly ten thousand yuan.

Display image of a wooden base mold with manually inserted steel plates

Based on market research and data analysis, it is found that the accuracy and stability of 3D printers are the most important factors in the tire mold industry. Jincheng Machinery has previously used other brands of 3D printers, but the stability and printing effect were not as good as SoonSer. Therefore, they have decided to extensively introduce SoonSer equipment for tire mold production.

Regarding stability, the TM-600 Pro is designed with a distributed and modular architecture, equipped with high-end optical and electronic components, which fully guarantees the stability of printing. In addition, for the application in the tire mold industry, SoonSer R&D personnel have optimized the process parameters and algorithms of the equipment, and the software can automatically identify model features and adopt corresponding process parameters to improve the printing quality of tire molds.

Regarding precision, the tire mold patterns printed by the TM-600 Pro have a size deviation of ±0.05mm in the tread grooves, with good surface details and high smoothness. This is mainly due to the two major control systems of the device: a high-precision liquid level control system and a high-precision calibration system. The former ensures precise control of the liquid level during printing, while the latter improves the printing accuracy of the entire model surface.

Print model reverse scanning data chart

Maximum part volume：600*600*400mm

Accuracy：±0.05mm~±0.1mm

Equipment dimensions：1520*1320*1970mm（W*D*H）

Printer weight：1000KG

SoonSer has developed a 3D printing solution specifically for tire mold manufacturers,  solving the problem of inability to process complex molds on traditional CNC equipment and enhancing the competitiveness of the industry.  At the same time, Jincheng Machinery's recognition of SoonSer reflects the clear open attitude of tire mold manufacturers towards the application of 3D printing technology in manufacturing processes,  showcasing Jincheng Machinery's market foresight a  a leading player in the tire mold industry.

I believe that the tire mold industry is on the verge of ushering in a digital era of industrial development,  and the industrial transformation is just around the corner!