Crumb rubber is a term usually applied to recycled rubber from automotive and truck scrap tires. During the recycling process steel and fluff is removed leaving tire rubber with a granular consistency. Continued processing with a granulator and/or cracker mill, possibly with the aid of cryogenics or mechanical means, reduces the size of the particles further. The particles are sized and classified based on various criteria including color (black only or black and white). The granulate is sized by passing through a screen, the size based on a dimension (1/4") or mesh (holes per inch : 10, 20, etc.). Crumb rubber is often used in astroturf as cushioning, where it is sometimes referred to as astro-dirt.
Mesh refers to material that has been sized by passing through a screen with a given number of holes per inch. For example, 10 mesh crumb rubber has passed through a screen with 10 holes per inch resulting in rubber granulate that is slightly less than 1/10 of an inch. The exact size will depend on the size of wire used in the screen.
Read more about Crumb Rubber: Recycled Pavement Material, Description of Crumb Rubber Grading
Famous quotes containing the words crumb and/or rubber:
“Civilization must be destroyed. The hairy saints
Of the North have earned this crumb by their complaints.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with cylinder oil, and coat their outsides with sprayed rubber film, and let them statically await the next emergency.”
—Norbert Wiener (1894–1964)