Inside Michelin's Top-secret MotoGP Lab

Michelin has been MotoGP’s exclusive tyre supplier for almost a decade. We get a rare peep inside the company’s MotoGP lab and see how its racing tyres are made—by a giant 3D printer

- Mat Oxley

IF I DID NOT KNOW BETTER, I WOULD THINK IT WAS magic. We are watching a Michelin MotoGP rear slick being made and it is a thing of wonder. The tyre is being created from nothing by Michelin’s C3M process, which is basically a huge 3D printer, measuring about four metres square and standing several metres tall.

The tyre is built on a spinning heated steel mould, one ingredient after the other. Computer-controlled robot arms whizz this way and that, applying the base rubber via a multi-head nozzle, knitting in metal cords, both the belts around the tyre’s bead and the cords crisscrossed across the tyre, then knitting in textile cords, then applying the rubber compound that does the work, layer by layer.

Everything happens at high speed, a blur before your eyes. Even so, it takes more than half an hour to complete the process. Then the tyre is mechanically transferred to the next-door curing oven, where a lot of heat and pressure create the tyre in its final shape. Importantly, the tyre does not undergo any changes in shape during the process, which can happen with conventionally built tyres.

If you are now looking for photos of this magical piece of machinery, do not bother. Michelin is so secretive about its C3M machine that our phones were locked away before we entered the factory premises and even Michelin’s official photographer was not allowed inside the workshop containing the C3M machine. In fact, very few Michelin employees have seen this thing, because the company is afraid of industrial espionage.

Each 3CM machine produces about 30 tyres per day, running 24 hours a day, pretty much all year round, making MotoGP tyres.

Remember Michelin’s Famous Overnight Tyres?