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Surface Finish Roughness Metrology Tutorial

Manufacturing Process and Design

Surface Finish Roughness Metrology Tutorial
T. V. Vorburger
Supervisory Physicist
Center for Manufactoring Engineering
National Institute of Standards and Technology

J. Raja
Assistant Professor
Mechanical Engineering & Engineering Mechanics
Department Michigan Technological University

George W. Barnwell
Professor of Production Practice Stevens Institute of Technology 1941
170 pages

US DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
National Institute of Standards and Technology

Open: Surface Finish Roughness Metrology Tutorial
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Introduction:

The surface finish is important to the function of many kinds of industrial products ranging from optics to highways, but there is a bewildering variety of techniques for measuring surface finish. In this tutorial, we will present a review of the field, hopefully a fairly inclusive one, and at the same time try to give some insight into the various classes of techniques for measuring surfaces and their uses.

The contents of our discussion today are as follows. Section 2 has some general ideas about surface roughness. This is followed by a section on the stylus technique, which is probably the most widely used class of instrument. After that we will discuss surface parameters, statistical functions, and filtering. Then we will survey other types of profiling techniques besides the stylus technique and area techniques as well, and finally we will discuss some examples of how surface finish affects surface function.

TOC

1. INTRODUCTION 1
2. GENERAL IDEAS ABOUT SURFACES 2
References 12
3. THE STYLUS TECHNIQUE 16
General 16
Transducers 16
Results 19
Key Properties 19
Stylus Tips 26
Traverse Mechanisms and Reference Lines 31
Pitfalls 33
Ra and Rq 35
Other Properties 35
Drawing Terminology 37
Calibration 41
Sources of Uncertainty 43
3-D Profiling 45
References 47
4. PARAMETERS, FUNCTIONS, AND FILTERING 51
Introduction 51
Constituents of Surface Texture 51
Measurement of Surface Profile 53
Separation of Waviness and Roughness (Filtering) 57
Surface Texture Parameters 65
Statistical Functions 73
Other Descriptors 78
References 80
5. SURVEY OF PROFILING TECHNIQUES 83
Fringe-Field Capacitance 83
Optical Sectioning 83
Interferometry 85
Recent Interferometers 87
Focus Detection 98
STM and AFM 98
References 106
6. AREA TECHNIQUES 110
Optical Scattering 110
Ultrasonics 122
Areal Capacitance 124
References 129
7. FUNCTION 132
Optics 132
Hydrodynamic Drag 134
Aerodynamic Drag 134
Metalworking 137
A Surface Texture Information System 146
References 150
APPENDIX A