Tire inspection machine presenting an X-ray image of the entire width of the tire
AssigneeUnited States Steel Corporation
InventorsDonald T. Green, Edward DE Benedetti
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An X-ray machine for production line inspection of tires places each tire in turn with one sector of the tire inside of a U-shaped arrangement of three fluorescent screens so that one screen faces the tread and the other two face the sides of the tire. An X-ray source inside the bead circle of the tire produces X-ray shadow pictures on the screens, which are separately viewed by a video camera, with an image of the picture on each screen transferred to a third of the target of a storage tube, so that a composite image of the entire width of the tire sector can be displayed on a picture tube. The tire is rotated stepwise for display of still pictures of every sector of the tire.
Claims9
An X-ray inspection system for a pneumatic tire, comprising:
- a. a support for a tire,
- b. means for stepwise rotation of a tire on the support,
- c. a plurality of fluorescent screens extending essentially around the entire width, from bead to bead, of the outside of a sector of a tire on the support,
- d. at least one X-ray source,
- e. means for directing X-rays from the X-ray source to each fluorescent screen in turn through the wall of the said sector of a tire on the support to form essentially adjoining shadow pictures of different parts of the sector of the tire on the several fluorescent screens,
- f. a video camera,
- g. means for exposing the video camera to each fluorescent screen in turn through paths of essentially equal optical length to produce a sequence of electronic images of the said adjoining shadow pictures,
- h. means for transferring the several electronic images in the video camera in turn to adjacent positions in a storage device, to produce an essentially complete composite image of the said sector of a tire, and
- i. means for displaying the said composite image as a still picture on a monitor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.