Green Tire Pallet Conveyor System: Automated Tire Plant Transport

Green Tire Pallet Conveyor System: Automated Transport for PCR/LTR Tire Plants

A green tire pallet conveyor system is a fully automated production-line solution for transporting uncured (green) tires between the tire building machine and the curing press in PCR passenger and LTR light truck tire plants. Each green tire stays on its own dedicated pallet throughout the process, enabling damage-free gentle transport and 100% individual track-and-trace.

Keywords: green tire; pallet conveyor; tire plant automation; tire building; curing press; WMS; MES; RFID; green tire storage

System Overview

The system integrates conveying, sorting, and buffer storage into one automated line. After building, the green tire is loaded directly onto a dedicated transport/storage pallet — either manually or by a robot from the building machine. The tire remains fixed on its pallet through conveying, buffering, and curing loading. This eliminates unnecessary gripping and flipping, enabling damage-free gentle transport and precise per-unit traceability.

Key Features

• Fully integrated automation for all green tire sizes
• Complete transport from tire building machine to curing press with minimal tire handling/gripping
• RFID technology tracks every tire individually through the entire production flow
• Quick installation for new plants or retrofitting existing lines; compact footprint

Core Principle: Minimize Gripping and Flipping

The central logic: each green tire is loaded onto its dedicated pallet at the building machine, transported to buffer storage, and held there until the curing press requests it. The tire never leaves the pallet between building and curing. This contactless gentle transport eliminates extra gripping and flipping operations that could distort the green tire, dramatically improving line efficiency.

The system uses standardized modular components that can be combined on demand for high flexibility. The equipment has a small footprint, high vertical integration, very low energy consumption, low spare-parts requirements, and low maintenance costs — achieving the lowest operational expense (OPEX) in the industry.

Control and Monitoring

A Warehouse Management System (WMS) tracks every pallet throughout the process and schedules logistics, with bidirectional data exchange to MES and ERP systems. This enables full-process monitoring, scheduling, and optimization of the entire line.

Pallet and Tire Adaptation

The system uses dedicated conical pallets compatible with multiple tire sizes. The conical pallet contacts the tire bead over a very small area, preventing bead deformation and improving manufacturing flexibility and finished quality. The pallet contact surface can be lined with various materials to reduce rubber sticking.

Integration with Tire Building Machines

The pallet system connects directly to the building process. Green tires stay on pallets without repeated gripping, preventing deformation. Tires are loaded directly from the building machine onto pallets without extra lifting or repositioning. Older low-output single-stage building machines can use manual pallet loading; newer high-output machines can integrate automatic loading modules.

Optional Isolant Spraying Integration

An automatic isolant (release agent) spraying system can be integrated before or after pallet buffer entry as an optional feature.

Integrated Green Tire Buffer Storage

Independent pallet storage of green tires is the core function. The pallet buffer warehouse provides short- and long-term capacity buffering between building and curing. Sprayed green tires can rest and dry in the storage area. The warehouse uses Miniload (lightweight box stacker) technology: any green tire can be retrieved at any time, following FIFO (first-in-first-out) — the earliest tire of a given size is served first. In case of production anomalies, a specific tire can be quickly and precisely retrieved.

The storage unit consists of rail-mounted stacker cranes, lightweight pickers, conveyors, and steel racks. A single warehouse has 500–1,500 pallet locations depending on line capacity; multiple warehouse units can be combined to achieve optimal buffer capacity in limited space.

Automated Curing Press Loading

Curing is the core high-cost process in tire manufacturing. Wrong green tire loading wastes energy and raw materials and can damage the curing press. The automated pallet conveyor delivers the green tire (on its pallet) directly to the curing press, fully eliminating extra gripping and flipping. The system also includes a tread splice positioning correction unit that aligns the tire joint before loading, avoiding mold defects.

Manual Workstation

A dedicated manual workstation allows operators to load/unload pallets and perform manual inspection. Tires that cannot be identified by the automatic system (barcode read failure) are diverted to the manual station, where operators use handheld scanners to enter tire data.

Standard Modular Components

Line Interface Modules

• Tire building machine interface
• Automatic isolant spraying system
• Curing press loading conveyor

Conveying Modules

• Straight conveyor sections
• Curved sections
• Acceleration/deceleration sections
• Vertical lifts / circulation elevators

Sorting Modules

li>Diverters
• Mergers
• 90° transfer cars
• Vertical sorting units

Storage Modules

• Pallet Miniload warehouse
• Through-flow pallet buffer line

Full-Process Traceability

The system achieves 100% precise tracking of all pallets. The location and data of any individual green tire can be queried at any production step. Operators can check the real-time position of any pallet; the system has preset tracking points that automatically report data as pallets pass. Pallets can be stopped or started at any time without losing trace information.

Technical Parameters