Optoelectronic Profilometer

Keywords Optoelectronic profilometer. Surface quality evaluation. Roughness measurements. 

The objective of this work is to analyse the conformity of the roughness parameters measured with an optoelectronic profilometer in order to make the measurement results equivalent with those obtained with traditional contact devices. The working parameters of the optoelectronic profilometer are controlled by software and based on filters which are modified depending on the measurement basis, chromatic fragmentation of the white light in this case. However, these parameters substantially differ from the usual contact profilometers (cut-off, evaluation length. 

Extensive tests were carried out over parts with a wide range of surface finish (roughness) and chip-removal processes. An in-depth study of the test results allowed for finding the main parameters that relates the contact profilometer measurement and the optoelectronic profilometer measurement. Operation time savings, avoiding trial error tests for finding the optimum setup of a particular measurement, justifies the importance of this study. In fact, for this profilometer, almost all processes can be fitted to an exponential curve (quality behavior curve), as shown in Fig.5. 

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