(van starts)
- So today is a really exciting day.
I'm here in Korbach, in Germany,
at the Continental Headquarters,
to take a look at how a tyre is made.
(light airy music)
So today we're going to take a look
at building a tyre from start to finish.
It's something that I've got no idea what goes into,
so it's gonna be really interesting.
Korbach is a centre of technology for Continental.
It's a huge company,
they make their winter care tyres here,
and they share a lot of that technology
with their mountain bike tyres.
But before we build a tyre,
we need to design one.
So let's take a look where that goes on.
So Continental makes seven different types
of mountain bike tyre here.
And all sorts of different compounds, casings,
widths and obviously wheel sizes.
So there's an awful lot of work
that goes into designing those tyres.
There's research and development.
There's also a team of athletes that work
with and help design those tyres.
So that's all well and good,
but let's actually get in the factory
and see where tyres are built.
So now we're in one of the oldest parts of the factory.
This is over 100 years old.
And this is also one of the most important parts,
this is where they make the rubber compounds.
I'm not sure what that means.
so let's take a look inside.
- No.
(light airy music)
- So Olaf wouldn't let me
into the rubber compounding station,
that's top secret stuff.
But inside this briefcase,
I have all the raw materials
that make up that rubber compound.
So inside here we have natural rubber,
that comes straight out of trees.
We have synthetic rubber,
so that's man-made.
We've got sulphur,
I've got all sorts of ingredients here.
Silica, black carbon.
All this stuff goes into a secret mixture
that makes up these rubber compounds.
And here we've got two different types of BlackChili,
and these are designed around the characteristics
you want from that tyre.
So things like durability, grip,
rolling resistance, damping.
And apparently the experts in the factory
can actually smell the difference
between the different types of rubber compound.
So this nylon fabric makes up the casing of the tyre.
And this one's actually 60 threads per inch.
And that is designed as well depending upon
how supple you want the tyre,
and also how puncture resistant you want the tyre.
That is then rubberized to make up the carcass of the tyre.
Because if you pull the threads end to end,
that's very strong.
But if you pull it at 90 degrees,
the threads will actually pull apart.
That is actually part of the design of these tyres.
When you go on to the building machine,
that is then folded across.
And it gives you that cross-ply affect,
that gives you strength at 360 degrees.
(light airy music)
So this rubber compound then goes through
an extruding machine,
that gives you the width and the depth
that will eventually make up the tread of the tyre.
And as you can see from the tools,
the sizes vary massively from big downhill tyres,
down to small, thin, low tyres.
(light airy music)
It's really cool to see raw materials
becoming parts of the tyre.
This machine at the moment is actually making
rubberized wire beads for 27.5 inch,
Kaiser downhill tyres.
So now we're into the really interesting
part of the factory.
This is the tyre building machine.
Here you can see the materials coming together.
We've got the casing below,
the rubber compound on top,
and at the moment we can see a Baron being built.
But the first step is to get our casing material
rolled around this drum.
You see where it's cut at 45 degrees there and joined?
And as the lightweight aramid beads go on,
see it's all laser guided as well.
This is the apex in part of the tyre.
So this goes just inside the bead.
And gives you stability on the tyre,
especially at low pressures.
Now this is where the fabric is then folded across
as I was talking about before.
The threads now cross each other and give you
that really good strength.
Next is the protection layer.
If this were a dual ply tyre you'd go around again
with two casings,
but this is just that protection layer.
Now this is where the rubber of the tyre
gets put on.
Again, it's just pressed onto that fabric.
It's then cut and then we've got a special roller,
that's sitting in a little oven over there,
so it's heated up,
and it joins that rubber together.
You can also see on the outside of the tyre now
we've got this protection layer that's gonna
sit against the rim,
to stop the rim from damaging the tyre,
but also giving it that really good seal.
The final part is even laser guided,
and this is the ceremony of getting the tyre label
put on there.
So there you go,
there's a Baron in one piece,
there's one final step to make this a tyre.
So the final part of the process of making tyres
is the vulcanization.
So to do that you need a press,
you need a lot of energy,
you need steam.
But also you need the mould.
Here you can see the 29 inch moulds,
26 down there,
27.5 here.
So these are big, heavy plates.
Let's just pull this one out.
This is the Cross King.
And what you can see in there
is a negative of the tyre tread.
So actually with that steam and the heat,
its just extruding the rubber into these imprints,
and that's how you get the tread.
You'll also notice here there's a load of vents,
1200 to be precise on a Cross King.
And that's what gives you those needles
on the end of the tyre tread.
So a Mud King, a Race King.
Aha!
A BaronProjekt, that's the one I'm after.
Let's take this one out.
It's very heavy,
I bet that's very expensive.
So the vulcanization process actually glues
everything together,
and extrudes the rubber to make the knobs using steam.
And that's why you see the old chimney
at the Continental factory.
Nowadays Conti have actually teamed up
with the local council and a waste plant to produce
the energy that makes that steam.
So there you go.
There's the final product.
A BaronProjekt 2.4 ready to be mounted to someone's bike.
That isn't the end of the line for Continental.
They then do all sorts of testing on these tyres,
from safety to performance.
We saw the inside of the R&D department
where tyres are tested for puncture resistance,
durability,
and we also snuck a camera inside the chamber
where tyres are pumped up super hard
to see what pressure at which they pop off the rim.
Tyres are also performance tested for rolling resistance.
So they can directly compare one type
of tyre to another,
and see which rolls the fastest.
So it's been amazing to tour the factory
here at Continental,
and see exactly how a tyre is made.
It's also very cool to see such a huge corporation
like this use their knowledge and technology.
Especially from their Windsor car tyres,
and that goes into making this BlackChili rubber compound
that we use on our mountain bikes.
There's also an awful lot
of high tech machines in this building,
but it's still really cool to see all that hand work
go into the tyres as well.
And rightly so.
They're still proud of that handmade in Germany tag.
Come see more videos like this,
and click on the GMBN logo to subscribe of course.
Click up there for tyre pressure explained,
and click down there for how to corner.
Because now you need to know how to ride
on these tyres.
Give us a thumbs up if you found this video interesting.