Blowing Grinding Dust from Tire Tread
Customer makes passenger vehicle tires. Car tires not only have to be balanced but they have to run true. The O.D. of the tire has to be concentric to the I.D. of the tire otherwise it will create a vibration on the car as though it were out of balance. To ensure roundness, they put the tire on a lathe type fixture and spin the tire. Any high spots will be removed when it makes contact with a grinding wheel. The grinding dust needs to be removed from the treads as this would alert the customer that this was a reworked tire. They had been using open copper pipes. It used an enormous amount of compressed air, was extremely loud, and in the end, it did not completely get the job done. Installing a Model 110009 9" (229mm) Aluminum Super Air Knife, they reduced their air consumption, lowered the sound level to 69 dBA, and completely cleared the tire tread of grinding dust.