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RubberWorld 568 Views ,

Metallurgical grade silicon metal and silicone rubber: A matter of national security

Metallurgical grade silicon metal (SiME) is essential to the production of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) silicone rubber, a material that is indispensable to modern life. As this article will show, metallurgical grade SiME, and not simply silicon, belongs on the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Critical Materials List because of its importance to national security. Currently, the DOE’s Critical Materials List includes “silicon,” a term that is overly broad because it also includes elemental silicon and polysilicon.

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ArticlesFeaturedMachinery & EquipmentTech Service
RubberWorld 661 Views ,

Controls help tire cord manufacturer improve performance of wire draw system

Global distributor Wesco and Siemens have teamed up with a
local integrator to enable a major Tennessee tire manufacturer to
achieve consistent tension and save money. As Chad Garner, a
Nashville based application engineer with distributor Wesco,
related: “We were presented with a significant challenge by one
of our great customers: a tire manufacturer in the area. They
needed to upgrade their multiple wire drawing machines for tire
cord production in the plant.”

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ArticlesFeaturedTech Service
RubberWorld 1914 Views ,

Scalable rubber devulcanization manufacturing process developed

Rubbintec Inc. has developed and patented an innovative and scalable rubber “devulcanization” manufacturing process that cleanly and efficiently recovers high quality rubber from waste tires on an industrial scale. The recovered rubber can easily be revulcanized to make new rubber products, such as rubber mats, conveyor belts, footwear soles, rubber flooring, liners, membranes, field covers, railway sleeper pads, railway sleepers and tire treads, to name a few. A certain percentage of the devulcanized material can also be added to a tire manufacturer’s rubber mix, which would assist tire manufacturers to be part of the circular economy and to make their production more sustainable. The selling price is said to be less than virgin rubber. Together with its collaborator, Polylema, production of asphalt modifiers that can substitute for SBS, at a lower cost, will also take place.

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