Method and apparatus for inspecting appearance of long-length objects

An apparatus for inspecting appearance of a long-length object formed by vulcanizing in the state in which a cloth member wraps spirally an outer surface of the long-length object and removing said cloth member from said outer surface, the apparatus comprising:

• a light source for irradiating a slit light onto the outer surface of the long-length object;
• a move mechanism for moving the long-length object relative to the light source and the long-length object relatively in the length direction of the long-length object;
• an image taking device capable of taking images of a lighted line, formed on the outer surface of the long-length object by irradiated slit light, from a direction forming an angle relative to a face of the slit light every predetermined timing;
• a position data extracting means for extracting respective height direction position data of the lighted line, which corresponds to a plurality of width direction positions of the long-length object, with respect to every taken image taken by the image taking device;
• a subtracting means for subtracting base data, which are provided to each of the width direction positions according to a shape of the outer surface of the long-length object, from each of the height direction position data, which correspond to each of the width direction positions;
• an inspection image making means for making an inspection image by arranging subtracted height direction position data of each taken image in image-taking order so as to conform to a predetermined color standard;
• a judging means for judging existence of unusual on the inspection image on the basis of a predetermined judging standard;
• and
• a guide mechanism for guiding the long-length object at a position which is upstream side of the moving direction of the long-length object relative to said lighted line,
• wherein the guide mechanism has a plurality of guide members which are arranged with intervals in the circumferential direction of the long-length object and each of the guide members is provided so as to be pushed on the outer surface of the long-length object.