Detecting tires in wheel-assembly machine

Challenge:

In a wheel assembly machine, one tire at a time can be put into the machine working area. Therefore, a sensor must detect if a tire is in the machine or not. The tire is sealed with soap so that the rim can slip smoothly into the tire. Due to high pressure, it happens that the soap produces some fog in the working area. Various sensor principles detect the fog as an object and pretend that a tire is still there unless it has already been unloaded.

Solution:

A radar sensor in an M30 housing operating at 122 GHz can detect the tire reliably and is not affected by fog, airstreams, or changing temperatures in the process.

Advantages:

• Environmental harshness does not affect the measuring result
• Reduced process costs due to correct tire detection