Whether measuring surfaces for household products or surgical implants, surface finish measurement is necessary to optimize key product attributes, ensure safety, and comply with regulatory standards.
AMETEK Germany opened a new state-of-the-art Customer Solutions Center in Weiterstadt, Germany, where visitors can find the latest news concerning the company’s many brands, and experience product demonstrations of technologies ranging from the field of elemental analysis, drive technology, optics metrology and surface measurement.
As surface finish measurement increasingly moves to the point of manufacture, adding automation to the process helps maximize productivity and increases quality and machining efficiency.
In this article, I wanted to go beyond the simple go/no go measurements that most air gaging is used for. Air gaging is a highly effective and efficient way for measuring these simple diameter requirements. It is also extremely repeatable on tight tolerances, but for this article, I wanted to focus on using air gaging to measure form requirements such as roundness, flatness, perpendicularity/squareness, taper, straightness, matching, and others.
Our Introduction to Surface Roughness Measurement guidebook is an excellent initiation to noncontact surface roughness measurement. It offers practical information on various topics to help make roughness measurement easy and efficient.
Specifications for surface texture frequently focus on surface “roughness”—the finer structures in the texture—often to the exclusion of the “waviness”—the larger structure of the texture. Unfortunately, problems related to sealing, vibration, noise, wear, etc., are regularly caused by issues hidden in the waviness domain, which cannot be captured by common roughness specifications.
Surface finish affects how a part will fit, reflect light, transmit heat, wear, distribute lubrication, accept coatings and more. The right finish should ultimately be determined by the part’s function and the engineering requirements of the application.
The Keyence IM-7030T is the newest addition to the IM Series. The new drop-indicator, light probe, 8 x12 in. FOV, and programmable ring light help make this the most capable measurement unit to date.