1. Basic Process Flow
With the rapid development of modern industry, especially the chemical industry, there is a wide variety of rubber products available. However, their production processes are generally the same. Products made from general solid rubber (raw rubber) typically involve the following production process:
Raw material preparation → Plasticization → Mixing → Molding → Vulcanization → Trimming → Inspection
2. Raw Material Preparation
The primary materials for rubber products include natural rubber, additives, fiber materials, and metal materials. Natural rubber serves as the basic material; additives are auxiliary materials added to enhance certain properties of rubber products; fiber materials (cotton, linen, wool, and various artificial and synthetic fibers) and metal materials (steel wire, copper wire) act as the skeletal materials for rubber products, enhancing mechanical strength and limiting deformation of the products.
During the raw material preparation process, ingredients must be weighed accurately according to the formula. To ensure that the raw rubber and additives can be uniformly mixed, certain materials require processing:
Raw rubber must be softened in an oven at 60-70℃ before cutting and breaking it into small pieces.
Blocky additives such as paraffin, stearic acid, rosin, etc., should be crushed.
Powdered admixtures containing mechanical impurities or coarse particles should be screened to remove them.
Liquid additives (rosin, guaiacol) require heating, melting, evaporating moisture, and filtering impurities.
The coupling agent must be dried to prevent caking, as it can fail to disperse evenly during mixing, cause bubbles during vulcanization, thereby affecting product quality.
