Large tire mold - GIF

[Frank S]

I work for a tire company. There are a lot of processes that go into making a tire.

In that short video, you see them lifting the tire out of the two piece mold. The top half of the mold is in the foreground, to the right. In the middle of that tire is a very large air bladder that inflates and pushes the green tire (or unmolded tire) into the depths of the mold in all directions. There's a lot to the molding process itself that isn't shown here.

I will tell you this, though, you don't ever want to be around when one of those air bladders decides to pop. The bladders we use in our facility aren't even that large, but on the occasion that one decides to end its useful life, it is a very brief but extremely loud exit. And, the percussion from the blast can send things flying.

Yep kind of like the off color joke I heard when visiting the Pirelli tire works at the plant located in Shandong province China.
the Italian Engineer there said to one of his Chinese counterparts these tires have to exceed all specifications because we don't want anyone to be able to say dago dago dago then dago wap wap wap The joke was totally lost on the Chinese man but I cracked up hearing MR Antonio tell it