Self-Sustaining Research & Development in Conti Matador Machinery

Since Continental’s acquisition of 51 per cent ownership of Matador in early November of last year, the German giant has merged its own Mould and Machine Factory with the Slovakia-based Matador Machinery division. The resulting company is now a world leader in designing and producing machinery and equipment for the whole tire industry, while Conti upped their stake in Continental Matador to 66 per cent on July 1 this year (as reported on the T&A website).

Conti Matador Machinery (CMM) offers products along the entire production chain for passenger, light truck tires and truck tires. Within the Mixing section, the company manufactures twin-screw sheeters, batch feeders and cooling lines; for the Preparation area, CMM offers textile cutters, maxi slitters, strip cutting machines, passenger bead winders, passenger apex appliers, truck apex appliers and super assembly lines; in Tire Building CMM can provide uni-stage and two-stage tyre building machines (TBMs) for passenger car radials, uni-stage TBMs for Truck and Bus Radials; within Curing CMM prepares Spraying Machines, Curing Presses, Mould Cleaning Machines; and finally – appropriately – in the Final Finishing sector, the company delivers a range of testing machines. As anyone can see from the exhaustiveness of this list, Conti Matador offers tantamount to everything a tyre manufacturer could ever need.

Indeed, one of the strengths of the merger was that both of the existing ranges of machinery were complementary. While Conti and Matador have offered tyre building machines individually, it is the only area in which their paths crossed pre-merger. So, for example, CMM now offers uni-stage and as well two-stage tire building machines, allowing the customer to choose a technology with best-fit for their needs in terms of flexibility, productivity and cost.

There is another obvious advantage to the merger. Because all of CMM’s products are used at Continental Plants worldwide, there exists a limitless and permanent opportunity for feedback from production. As a consequence CMM has the ability to make continuous improvements to the machines and make innovations using information gathered in the company’s own tyre plants. The opportunities for self-sustaining research and development are therefore practically unlimited.

As one would expect within such a dynamic environment, CMM have announced several new products since their merger. The Super Assembly Machine (SA1450) is used to assemble (splice) the inner liner and sidewalls for the production of all steel truck tires, making a completed profile, which is consequently applied in the tire building machines. The capacity of the machine is more than 3000 m during the working shift.

Secondly the Apex Applier (PA1320) is designed for the apex application on tire beads between the sizes of 13 and 20 inches with a high level of automation. The apex supply can be routed straight from an extruder, while the profile of the apex can be straight or curved. The bead supply comes from a horizontal column and must at present be manned by an operator – the only part of the process which requires manual labour in the use of this machine: the application of the apex is fully automatic. The machine working cycle is approximately 8 seconds and the capacity is about 3,000 beads for the working shift.

CMM has hundreds of specialist developers who have the ability to produce sophisticated bespoke products for specific customer requirements. The close attention to customers’ needs, accessed through the views of those in manufacturing departments within Continental, guarantees that engineers have the ability constantly to improve products that meet real market demands.