Inspection of human-readable tyre markings

Inspection of human-readable tyre markings Project type: Automotive Date 2021 The customer manufactures tyres. The tyres have different characteristics that need to be controlled. At the moment, these characteristics are controlled by an employee. The characteristics shall be 100 % controlled on both sides. The employee needs about 45 minutes for this. Unfortunately, the process blocks the production line for up to 3 hours, as a qualified employee is not always immediately available to carry out quality control. It is planned to perform this process automatically. Either inline to 100% or in separate test stations. There are currently 3 test benches for such separate tests in plant 1 and 4 test bench in plant 2. So a total of 7 inspection tables. The aim is to replace a test bench in the first step and to test to what extent this improves the process. The first tyre of a production batch must always be tested. This means that no comparison images are yet available. The target files are specified on a test protocol and are available as a 3D file in CAD. The 3D file is exported as .DXF and serves as a target for image processing testing. Based on this DXF, the image processor reads all text and symbols and can then evaluate the recorded 3D image of the front and back of the tire. Each letter is read in and the correct presence of certain symbols is checked, as well as the absence in certain areas where no text/symbol should be present.