What's in a name? (Editorial).

If you have one of our editorial calendars, you would know this is our tire issue. If you don't, you're probably thinking that we seem to be running a lot more tire-related material than usual. But, if you don't actually indicate on your editorial calendar that a certain issue is a tire issue, you're accused of ignoring tires. The accusers ignore the fact that a good portion of the testing, machinery, material, design, processing and engineering issues have numerous articles concerning tires. "Where's your tire issue?" was a question we got frequently.

Well, this is our designated tire issue. But most readers could tell that before getting here. All you had to do was look at the cover or the contents page. But if it didn't say it on the editorial calendar there's a portion of you that would accuse us of ignoring tires.

We're giving you so much tire in this issue that I'm going to avoid writing about the troubles the industry has been going through. Our Market Focus section (p. 16) gives you an objective viewpoint from figures supplied by the Rubber Manufacturers Association. We even have a letter (p. 6) that takes the major tire companies to task for their natural rubber buying practices. The author, Bill Watson, is a rubber industry veteran who, among other accomplishments, founded Rapra. He has some insightful comments and offers some solutions.

There are also articles on tire testing and FEM, direct extrusion, the ongoing development of coupling agents and intelligent tires. The Process Machinery article on cutting normal to the surface mold lettering involves a whole different area of tire manufacturing.

We are also running a news item about the joint venture between Goodyear and Amerityre to develop urethane tires. This is significant because the companies claim their ultimate objective is replacing rubber automotive tires. This is not a new idea. Work on urethane tires has been going on since urethane was invented. The major tire companies have all looked at these tires and passed because of some shortcoming, usually handling or traction. But it looks like Goodyear is taking another look and if all goes according to plan, we will still publish an annual tire issue. We will still publish a urethane issue as well. But it will probably look a lot like a tire issue.