Improved accuracy of on-line tire profile measurement using a novel on-line calibration

Precise tire tread profile measurement can improve quality and deliver significant cost saving over raw material. Current systems provide on-line profile measurements with accuracy of not better than 0.15 mm. Improved accuracy increases quality and widen the applications of profile measurement systems. In this paper a simple laboratory on-line profile measurement system has been developed. A laser light source with Gaussian distribution and sheet of light pattern has been used. A novel on-line calibration along with some other adjustments has made higher accuracies achievable. The system uses a digital camera to capture high resolution images of object. Preprocessing provides a sharply distributed pattern. Images are further processed using image processing techniques and the depth information is extracted using Triangulation method. A brief description of the systems hardware and software are given. The results of experiments are reported.