In October 2021, STEP signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Zhongce Rubber and Gude Intelligent to implement an intelligent solution for rubber tire laser engraving. Please follow the author's lens and go to the scene to see the effect of the implementation.

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Faced with a series of challenges such as rising labor costs in recent years, poor rubber tire manufacturing environment, and aging workers, the rubber tire industry is under pressure from a severe labor shortage crisis. In order to meet these challenges, Zhongce Rubber introduced the STEP robot tire laser lettering intelligent workstation through Gude Intelligent, implemented process iterations, and realized efficient tire manufacturing.

In 2020, Zhongce Rubber cooperated with STEP and Gude Intelligent to jointly develop an intelligent solution for tire laser lettering, which mainly consists of STEPSR50/2180 six-axis robot, 3D laser vision system, laser engraving system and Mecanum wheel Composition of Chinese institutions.

This solution adopts a new technology, which replaces the production technology of pre-embedded cycle cards, steel receipts and vulcanized hollow barcodes in traditional production. On the basis of this, the appearance grade of the product has been greatly improved.

At the same time, compared with the previous mold process, this solution can flexibly realize DIY personalized customization, such as engraving QR codes for anti-smuggling, customizing small batches, and personalized LOGO.

The traditional cycle card and steel receipt process is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the cost of consumables is high. The cycle card needs to be stopped and replaced every week. The mold is easy to be damaged during the operation. The installation position and precision are rough and there are gaps and rubber edges. The vulcanized tire grade steel ticket needs to be manually placed once for each tire, which is a lot of work. At the same time, because the steel ticket is easy to move and skew on the mold, the position of the ticket is wrong and the font is pressed, which does not meet the quality requirements. It often happens that steel receipts stick to the tires, which can easily cause tire scratches when shaving; the period plate and vulcanized tire number steel receipts have the disadvantages of rough fonts and are easy to be imitated.

The intelligent solution for tire laser engraving eliminates the phenomenon of cycle card overflow, reduces the repair rate, and improves product appearance; it completely bid farewell to the material, labor and error correction costs caused by the cycle card and steel ticket process, and improves the vulcanizing machine. The utilization rate has realized cost reduction and efficiency increase; it can automatically interact with the production MES system, automatically generate data, open up MES and WMS systems, and improve the level of digitization and intelligence.

After more than a year of stable operation, Zhongce Rubber is satisfied with the results of the intelligent tire laser lettering solution. It took less than a year to recover the equipment investment, and it has been promoted and used in various factories of the group.

About Zhongce

Zhongce Rubber is one of the top ten tire companies in the world and number one in China, and one of the top 500 manufacturing companies in China, with an annual output of 55 million sets of tires. Zhongce has 11 domestic and foreign large-scale production bases including Chaoyang, Jiande, Jintan, Xiaoshan, Anji, Yonggu, Qingquan, etc. Zhongce owns well-known tires such as Chaoyang, Weishi, Haoyun, Quannuo, Yadu, and ARISUN brand.