Car and truck makers continue to set ever-stricter standards in force variation, conicity and couple imbalance. Several trends conspire to make these standards difficult to meet. The trend toward lower aspect ratios in high performance tires results in more splices being crowded into a smaller sidewall area, making some quality requirements more challenging to achieve consistently.
Meanwhile tire building machines are pushed to faster cycle times in order to achieve better productivity. Many tire makers are pursuing alternative tire building processes that reduce the number of splices in order to achieve better tire uniformity.