Guangdong Greatoo Aims to Offer Cutting Edge Moulds
Guangdong Greatoo Molds Inc’s global appeal has increased since gaining ISO9001-2001 International Quality Certification, with company representatives describing the company’s current products as “the gold standard.” Tyres & Accessories/tyrepress.com met with the company’s senior technical consultant RNK Krishnan at November’s Reifen China show and asked what makes this Chinese mould making operation stand out?
What is different about Greatoo is the fact that, unlike some competitors, the company offers three kinds of mould manufacturing – CNC direct engraving, aluminium precision casting and Electric Discharge Machine (EDM) technology. The latter was obtained from aluminium casting experts at German firm AZ Mould. As a result the company reports it is now capable of producing “high quality aluminium moulds including winter moulds.” Their philosophy is that moulds are “critical parts in tyre manufacturing and require precision in all stages…their maintenance plays a vital role in ensuring the consistency of the tyre.”
To this end the company has invested in technologies such as five axis CNC machines, which the company has in plentiful supply for direct engraving on tread segments and are powered by CAD/CAM software such as UG and CI-Matron. There are even facilities for direct engraving on specialist forged steel and forged aluminium products imported from leading suppliers.
Greatoo are also said to be “adopting newer technologies to reduce the number of parts in segmented moulds for optimising mould weight and cost and thus helping the customer shorten the curing time by better heat transfer mechanism.” One of the first results of this endeavour is the company’s most recent product – a segmented 40.00R57 radial OTR mould, which RNK Krishnan describes as: “a testimony to its technological excellence…customers are very happy with its mould performance.” Ventless moulds, using puzzle mould techniques for a better finish are also on this list of company achievements.
Award-winning education
Greatoo operates from a huge 240,000 square metre campus in the Jiedong Economic Development and Experimental Area, where 200 engineers produce more than 3600 sets of moulds and containers. Moulds are exported to companies in the US, Europe and Asia. And all of this is realised by a highly skilled workforce.
According to RNK Krishnan, Greatoo has set up centres of engineering excellence such as the National Enterprise Technical Centre and Mould Engineering Technology R&D Centre, which are the only two institutions of their kind in China. These two facilities work closely with Guangdong University of Technology and the Jieyang Technical College. Greatoo is also an authorised research hub of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (Guangdong province). In fact the company’s research and development is said to be so advanced that the company has managed to “indigenise” development of CNC machines and therefore claims it has achieved “self reliance” in this respect. In addition Greatoo provides opportunities for students to conduct doctoral research in its centres.
Moving forward, company representatives report that Greatoo is aiming to support its continued drive to a “top league” position with further investment in newer seven-axis CNC engraving machines from Japan for direct engraving of large size tread segments, particularly OTR moulds. The aim here is to achieve even better levels of accuracy, finish quality and speed and thereby offer a more increasingly attractive service proposition to potential manufacturing customers.
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