Laser light is ideally visible on dark materials such as black rubber. Therefore, tire manufacturers use lasers for 3D quality inspection, for reading text and codes on the tire wall, for positioning the tires for various processing steps, and also for reprocessing.

During the 3D recording of tires, their tread, tread depth, characters or codes, a laser module projects one or more straight lines at an oblique angle onto the tire surface. A device now moves or rotates the tire. The laser lines are now distorted by the three-dimensional shape of the tire tread, the codes, letters or numbers. At another oblique angle, an industrial camera records these distortions as the tire moves. Using so-called triangulation algorithms, it is now possible to digitally reconstruct the 3D shape of the tire, the profile and the characters on the surface. This laser triangulation is very fast, accurate and reliable.

Lasers are also suitable for supporting manual work steps, such as positioning tires for correct feeding into the tire press.