What song is your surface playing? It’s an odd thing to ask…but it’s a helpful way to think about surface texture. Sound systems and stereos often have a “graphic equalizer,” a series of digital bars that move up and down to the music. Those bars show us how much of each band of frequencies is … Read more
What’s that extra rough structure in my surface texture? It could be real data…but it also could have been a door closing, or someone tapping the table, or a vibration in the gage. Bad data like this can have you chasing after process and measurement issues that may not be real. In this Notepad Series … Read more
What do you do when your measurements don’t match what your supplier or customer measured? In this Notepad Series video we show you a technique that can help you compare the measurements—not just the differences in the average values but also the variability in the measurements. It’s very helpful for interpreting differences in data.
Think about the last time you saw a zebra: was it black with white stripes, or white with black stripes? In this Notepad Series video we show how “stripes” of light and dark in surface texture can be an indicator of wear. The spacing of those stripes will depend on the surface geometry—and we’ll show … Read more
Trying to understand surface texture using just a parameter or two is like trying to drive at night using only your speedometer and a compass. Those tools can tell you which direction you’re headed, and how fast…but they can’t help you to correct. The situation is the same in the world of surfaces: a number … Read more
Sanding a wood project — it makes a beautiful final finish (even if it takes a lot of work to get there!) A plateaued surface finish is similar to a sanded wood finish: we start with a rough process that creates the valley regions, then we go back over it with a finer process to … Read more