Milliken x Black Donuts Engineering

Black Donuts Engineering Reviews Millicap™️

Milliken x Black Donuts Engineering: An Objective Review of MilliCap™ - Milliken’s Newest Cap Ply Tire Innovation

Meet MilliCap™, a ready-to-use, precision-slit textile offering great value to tire production. MilliCap was developed to shorten tire manufacturing cycles, improve cost efficiencies while prioritizing sustainability, and reduce the rubber weight. But don’t just take our word for it.

We partnered with Black Donuts Engineering, an objective third-party consultant, to evaluate MilliCap and provide an independent review of our newest innovation. This Black Donuts Engineering assessment studied both our production process and product performance. From the beginning, the tire designs and manufacturing process used for this study were determined with Black Donuts Engineering’s supervision and personnel on site to ensure consistency and prevent tampering.

Black Donuts Engineering considered three factors when selecting the tires they would test to evaluate MilliCap peformance:

speed rating
tire size
winding profiles

Speed rating is the dominant factor related to stresses and durability of the tire when considering cap ply material. Black Donuts Engineering selected the speed ratings of H and V, commonly used in tires sold worldwide in regular passenger cars. In terms of tire size, two tire types were selected to cover the main markets 185/65R15 92 H XL and 185/65R15 92 H XL. When considering the winding profile for the economy tire, a common 1-1-1 winding profile was chosen for its low speed rate and smallest 15” size. The second was a 16” tire with a more demanding 2-1-2 winding type.

The results? Five vital conclusions:

MilliCap can be processed with existing equipment
Rolling resistance improves up to 5%
Rubber usage reduces by approximately 4%
Longer shelf life (1 year) increases production flexibility
MilliCap enables skipping the calendaring step and decreases scrap, further optimizing the manufacturing process

With lower rubber usage in production and an improved rolling resistance resulting in fuel savings or increased battery mileage per tire, it’s safe to say that the MilliCap material is a smart choice for the future.

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