The U-Shape x-ray camera has specifically been developed for the digital tire inspection of truck tires and car tires. The U-Shape utilizes the reliable NTB linear x-ray Camera with CMOS Technology. The U-Shape camera consists of single camera elements which are aligned seamless in a U-form, so that the complete tire can be inspected from bead to bead in one single rotation. Through the variable resolution (0.25 mm - 1.3 mm) the U-Shape is suitable for the use in the tire production, as well as in the research and development. With a scanning speed of up to 80 m/min, the U-Shape camera guarantees a high tire throughput. Therefore it is possible to integrate the U-Shape for quality assurance directly into the production process. The 12 bit A/D conversion supplies high resolution x-ray images with up to 4096 grey levels. Due to the compact size and it's low weight the U-Shape is especially suitable for manipulator systems.
With the integrated software the x-ray images can be evaluated, processed, saved, transmitted or be used for documentation. During the tire inspection, the x-ray image gets displayed online in an full-screen scrolling. A special software feature is the automatically calculated Look Up Table (LUT): The automatic LUT shows each tire with the optimal contrast. The time-consuming manually adjustment of the LUT for different tire types is no longer necessary.
By the help of the supplied software library (DLL) it is possible to integrate the U-Shape camera system into other programs. Thereby custom-designed solutions up to a fully automatically tire inspection becomes reality.