Cylindrical tire forming member manufacturing apparatus
AssigneeBridgestone Corporation
InventorsKouji Okuyama, Makoto Yamamoto, Hidetoshi Kimura, Taizo Ito
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
In a cylindrical tire forming member building method or apparatus, after the front end portion of a belt-shaped material is pressed against the drum, the belt-shaped material is wound on the drum while being centered, and with the central portion of the rear end portion of the belt-shaped material pressed against the drum with a robot hand, both edge portions of the rear end portion of the belt-shaped material are elongated longitudinally and pressed against the drum with the robot hand, so tha front and rear ends of the belt-shaped material are butt-joined without forming a gap therebetween or without being overlapped.
Claims8
An apparatus for building a cylindrical tire forming member, comprising:
- a building drum;
- a robot positioned in juxtaposition to said building drum and having a hand which is movable at least in a plane perpendicular to an axis of rotation of said building drum;
- a pair of lower pawls coupled to said robot hand body so that said lower pawls are movable towards and away from each other;
- a pair of upper pawls coupled to said robot hand body so that said upper pawls are paired with said lower pawls, respectively, said upper pawls being movable towards and away from the lower pawls to clamp together with the upper pawls opposite edge portions in a widthwise direction of a belt-shaped material;
- rocking means for rocking said upper and lower pawls paired as units in said plane;
- and
- a depressing member operatively coupled to said robot hand body, positioned between said pair of upper pawls and being movable in the direction of the thickness of said belt-shaped material to forceably apply the belt-shaped material interiorly of said edge portions against the periphery of said drum.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.