CONTROL OF THERMAL HISTORY OF REINFORCING CORDS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF V-BELTS.

One of the methods for producing close-tolerance V-belts, utilizing a practical process that takes good advantage of economies of scale, employs rotary vulcanization. Rotary vulcanization, however, places very high demands on the materials and manufacturing processes that go into the articles to be vulcanized. The cords actually end to be dynamic elements during the entire vulcanization process, but if everything is done successfully, the rotary vulcanization method will result in V-belts whose reinforcing cords are accurately and reproducibly situated in them and whose final physical state is exactly that for which the V-belt was designed. This means that cords will end up being physically incorporated in the cured compound to an extent which will not change substantially when the belt is actually mounted and run on a drive system.