TIRE BUILDING APPARATUS AND METHOD

A method is disclosed comprising placing a tire building drum of a tire building machine in a position relative to a machine vision system, the machine vision system being configured to generate a three dimensional image of the tire building drum as a breaker or a green rubber tread is applied to the tire building drum. In a first aspect, the method comprises: setting a radius of the tire building drum to a known radius; and attaching a calibration fixture to the tire building drum, where a position of a plurality of surfaces of the calibration fixture are known relative to a bottom surface of the calibration fixture; obtaining an axial image trace across the calibration fixture attached to the tire building drum; and mapping, from the axial image trace, a position in an array column of individual ones of a plurality of pixels to corresponding radius values relative to a center of the tire building drum for the machine vision system to be used to generate a subsequent three dimensional image. In a second aspect, the method comprises: identifying at least one edge of the tire building drum in the three dimensional image, wherein a location of the at least one edge comprises a corresponding at least one calibrated edge position; and storing the at least one calibrated edge position of the tire building drum for verification of a position of the tire building drum. Furthermore, an apparatus for practicing this method is disclosed.