Jan 2012:Bridgestone all Set to Add a Dash of Colour to your Tyres

Tired of the same old black and boring tyres? You may soon say goodbye to them. Bridgestone tyres is all set to usher in an exciting era of creative and colourful tyres with its new innovative tyre printing technology.

The Current Printing Technology

At the moment all tyre manufacturers use white rubber on the sidewalls. During the process, a white ribbon is created, resulting in white lettering being printed on the sidewalls.

Now this method has a few disadvantages. In order to guard against discolouration and to maintain durability of the printed matter, large quantity of the white rubber is need to be used.

This naturally contributes to increase in the tyre weight that adversely impacts fuel efficiency leading to greater environmental damage.

Bridgestone’s Revolutionary Printing Technology Fixes above Problems

At the core of Bridgestone’s innovative printing technology, is a set of new inks specifically developed for printing purposes.

The ink is sandwiched between two protective layers, which form a protective coating over the ink to prevent discolouration and reduce impact of external influences on the surface.

As a result, the durability is maintained for longer. And as the ‘additional weight’ issue associated with the current technology is eliminated, the tyres are more fuel efficient and environment friendly.

A representative from Bridgestone mentioned that the new technology “can realise the more creative showcase of tyres”, indicating that exciting and colourful times are coming up in the world of black and white.

The Future

Bridgestone confirmed that they will soon bring this technology to the market. (At the moment, the technology has not yet been used commercially).

The company is confident the new tyre printing technology will provide opportunities for numerous creative applications. For instance, it can be utilised to allow a customer to create a unique custom tyre design.

Some customers may even incorporate photographs on tyre sidewalls. And Bridgestone reiterated that the biggest advantage of course is that these designs can be changed or removed as the customer desires.

This will be a unique value addition that Bridgestone will offer to its customers and will definitely be enthusiastically received by customers.

Need for Printing on Tyres

All tyres need to have identification information on them. The most important information is of course the brand name that allows identification of specific products.

This information (with the appropriate stylization, logo etc) is printed on the tyre sidewall. The front tyre sidewall is the portion of the tyre visible to you when you see the vehicle. The part behind it is the back sidewall.

Apart from the name, the tyre sidewall also has printed markings that indicate tyre size, maximum inflatable pressure, load bearing capacity etc.

The soon to be enforced EU tyre labelling regulations demand manufacturers to make known additional features of the tyre like noise levels, wet grip resistance, rolling resistance etc. All in all, a lot of information to the printed on the tyres.

And the new printing technology from Bridgestone promises to give a whole new look to the tyres.