Matching buffing and building machines to your daily output

When retreading plants add equipment, a common question is how many buffing and building machines they need to keep up with daily output.

Start with the cycle time of a single machine. Our gantry buffing machine takes about 3 minutes per truck/bus tyre, handles tyres up to 1.2 m in outer diameter and 400 mm tread width, runs on a 21 kW main motor and comes with dust extraction. Our gantry building (pressing) machine also takes about 3 minutes per tyre, at 1.5 kW.

Then work back from your target. Say you run a 9-hour shift and want 60 tyres a day — that is roughly 7 tyres an hour. At about 3 minutes per tyre, one buffing machine and one building machine can each handle well over ten tyres an hour, so one of each is enough, with room for changeovers and breaks. For higher output or two continuous shifts, consider adding a buffing or building station.

Check your tyre sizes too. Common sizes such as 295/80R22.5, 315/80R22.5, 12R22.5 and 11R22.5 fall within the range above; for wide-base sizes like 385/65R22.5, confirm the buffing width when selecting a machine.

One last point: buffing and building are only the first two steps — how many tyres you can finish per day also depends on the curing chamber capacity. It is best to size inspection, buffing, building and curing together as one line. Send us your tyre sizes and daily target and we will put together a configuration.