What Is The Process of Rubber Extrusion?

FQ has been in the rubber extrusion industry since 2005, and it has been 20 years this year. We are recognized as one of the top three in China for our rubber extrusion products and processes, and have long cooperated with famous companies such as Fuyao Group and Minshi Group.

Today, I'll take you into FQ's EPDM extrusion plant and TPV extrusion site to explore how rubber extrusion strips are produced and how to produce a safe and reliable quality automotive sealing strip.

The process of rubber extrusion mainly includes the five following steps: raw material preparation, mixing, extrusion, cooling and post-treatment.

1.Raw Material Preparation

First, the rubber needs to be heated to make it soft and easy to extrude. At the same time, according to the performance requirements of the products, the vulcanizing agent, filler, plasticizer and other additives are added to the rubber according to the formula ratio.

Rubber refining is the basis of the whole extrusion process is even more critical, we can according to the different needs of customers to design the ratio of powder and rubber softness. Different raw materials produce seals with different functions and characteristics, such as hardness, smoothness, granularity, durability, weatherability, fire resistance, etc.

2、Mixing

The heated rubber and additives are put into the mixing machine for mixing. The mixing process can make the rubber and additives fully mixed, but also help the rubber molecules crosslinking, improve the strength and elasticity of the products. After mixing, the rubber becomes soft and has good plasticity.

In this process, we will also take advantage of the high temperature to cut him into strips, so as to improve the speed of extrusion and is not prone to such accidents as clogging.

After the raw material is ready, we will send it to the cleaning table, in this process we will add the anti-sticky powder in the cleaning tank. The purpose of this step is to prevent the rubber cut into strips from sticking together, and has a certain cooling and cleaning effect.

After the cleaning process is completed we leave them on the drying table for 30 minutes and then we can move on to the extrusion step.

It is important to note that the rubber must be kept in a constant temperature and humidity storage after refining and molding, and all of this rubber must be used within 7 days, otherwise some of the powder in the rubber will fail and there will be defects in the extrusion process.

3、Extrusion

The mixed rubber is put into the extruder for extrusion. The extruder heats the rubber to a certain temperature and extrudes the rubber through the rotation of the screw. In the process of extrusion, different shapes of rubber products can be made by changing different shapes of molds, such as tubes, plates, strips and so on.

In the process of rubber extrusion temperature and speed control is very important, each process of temperature control, and at any time the product cross-section inspection is the most important need to pay attention to in the process.

The composition of rubber extrusion line includes extruder, high temperature shaping equipment, microwave vulcanization equipment, hot air vulcanization equipment, cooling section, traction machine, cutting machine, punching machine and so on. In the TPV extrusion line, we also have automatic cutting and automatic backing process to realize fully automatic production.

4、Cooling

After extrusion, the rubber product needs to be cooled to allow the rubber to cool down and cure quickly to ensure that the product can maintain the desired shape and properties. Fuqiang done by water immersion cooling or air cooling.

The cooling of the product is very important, if there is not enough cooling of the static directly after processing, so that the production of the seal will have a very large defective rate, and the performance of the product will be affected.

5、Post-treatment

Finally, the extruded rubber products need to be post-treated, including trimming, joint, adhesive backing, deburring, surface treatment, etc., in order to make the surface of the products smooth and neat. At the same time, the products can also be vulcanized or other processing techniques as needed to meet the specific requirements of customers.

Through the above steps, the rubber extrusion process is completed. 

Extrusion process has the advantages of high production efficiency, wide range of applications, to meet the production needs of different shapes of rubber products. In actual production, the extrusion process needs to be optimized according to specific product requirements and process characteristics to ensure that the quality and performance of the products reach the expected level.

In the past 20 years, FQ has been in the automotive NVH industry to move forward, FQ's Company Mission: Give customers the expected touch, Share results with employees, Create value for society.We believe that FQ will do better and better in the rubber extrusion seal industry!