Michelin is starting a new factory in SC to make airless off-road tires
for loaders and other things.
--R
On 12/1/14 8:01 AM, archer75--- via Mercedes wrote:
Tannus tyres: is this the end of the road for bike punctures?
A South Korean company believes it has invented a tyre that might just change
the world.
Bicycle tyres are strange things. You rely on them every day to get you to and
from work, yet largely forget they exist until – bang – one punctures at 7.43am
on the wettest morning in December when you’re halfway between home and office.
Cue 20 miserable minutes in the lashing rain spent changing your inner tube and
slashing your fingers to pieces in the process.
Nothing can deflate the mood quite like a puncture – which is why various
inventors have sought to produce solid tyres since the air-filled (or
pneumatic) inner tube trundled onto the scene back in the mid 19th Century. The
problems they have encountered have been numerous (too heavy, too weak, too
vulnerable to heat), but the main sticking point has always been shared: solid
tyres just don't ... roll.
Until now. Tannus, a family-run South Korean company with a background in the
shoe industry, believes it has invented a solid tyre that performs just as well
as its pneumatic counterpart. Quietly, and with all the humility that befits a
firm more accustomed to making shoe soles than bike tyres, Tannus think they
might just have changed the world.
The basis to their claim is a new polymer called Aither. Named after the Greek
deity who embodied the pure 'upper air' that gods were said to breathe, the
material encases minuscule air bubbles (each is about 10 micrometers wide) in a
robust mesh of protective walling.
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