Development of a novel profile measurement system for actively planed surfaces

The importance of a reliable and robust surface profile measurement system in the inspection of surface finish is beyond any doubt. For years, visual inspection has been employed in industries to determine the quality of surface finish. Since, in most cases, it fails to ensure a consistent minimum standard of finish quality, mechanical stylus based measurement systems have successfully taken over from human inspection. However, in recent years, the trend is to explore other techniques for conducting the surface profile measurements. Non-contact optical methods have emerged as one of the leading candidates. A target application concerning the surface quality of wooden products requires the use of non-contact techniques to avoid surface damage. This paper deals with a non-contact optical surface profile measurement system based on the pickup of a commercially available DVD player. Significant cost reduction and seamless integration of the sensor into a manufacturing process line may be achieved with the proposed method. The performance of this DVD profilometer with samples of Delrin nylon and hardwood has been analyzed and discussed in this paper. It has been shown that the measurement results show good correlation with the benchmarks obtained with the help of a leading commercial profilometer, the Talysurf.