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Measuring the surface texture of this O-ring presents a challenge. With a small radius and cross-section, steep sides, and soft material, it’s almost impossible to measure with a stylus. An optical instrument can do the job...but that's just the first hurdle! In this Surface Notes blog post we show you how to use the Geometry Removal and Filtering tools in OmniSurf3D to measure this complex shape. You can try it for yourself as well—the dataset is available in our Surface Library! 

"Can I trust my measurement?" That question drives us to produce meaningful measurement results. In this post we examine how dirt and debris can produce artificial "features" in surface texture data—errors that are sometimes the exact opposite of what you might expect to find. And those errors may have you chasing down changes in your process that aren't really there. We'll show you what to look for, and some steps you can take to tell whether features are real or not.

Wenzel America has invited Digital Metrology to take over their LinkedIn page for the week! For those of you who may not know, Wenzel (Wixom, Michigan) is the largest family-owned metrology company specializing in CMM high-speed optical scanning, gear inspection, and CT systems. Thanks to Wenzel, America for this opportunity to share some of our many resources  with Wenzel's followers!

OmniSurf and OmniSurf3D guide you through the surface analysis process and show you what happens at each step. In this short video we introduce you to the profile/surface displays that walk you through each step and show you what's happening.

When Hexagon needed to analyze surface texture data from their optical roughness sensor, they turned to Digital Metrology and OmniSurf3D. Read more on our Collaborations page.

TraceBoss+ lets you analyze your surfaces by the numbers, and it also helps you SEE what’s happening with your process. This short video shows how the Image Explorer feature lets you import an image of a surface, calculate crosshatch angle, explore the surface quality, and save the image and numerical results in a single file.

Join Rottler Manufacturing for an Open House on October 5–7 to celebrate the company’s 100 year anniversary! The event will include live machine demonstrations, hands-on experience with factory technicians, technical seminars and presentations, and live music entertainment on Friday night. Digital Metrology’s Mark Malburg will join Scott Rowe (Rottler) and Keith Jones (Total Seal Piston Rings) for the session, The latest in cylinder wall finishes and piston rings and how to apply to your business. Thursday Oct 5th 9-11am.  And check out Rottler’s demo honing machines, now running Digital Metrology's TraceBoss+ software! Event details, the full agenda, and hotel and travel information are available here.

We commonly need to crop out some surface texture data to focus on an area of interest. Most software has a tool that lets you select a region…but the region may not line up with the tool. OmniSurf3D now has an Interactive Cropping tool that lets you rotate the data to quickly line up the cropping tools with the data. Learn how in this 60-Second Surface Analysis video.

Surface roughness measurements frequently include more data than we want to analyze. The extra areas may include steps, noise, or irrelevant features that will skew any parameters that we calculate. To get to the data we want, we need to focus on just part of the profile. OmniSurf software (Digital Metrology) includes several tools for selecting a region for analysis, and for calculating the parameters over just this region of interest. We'll show how to use those tools in this 60-Second Surface Analysis video.

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. In this video we describe the profile graph and dive into what it can tell us about our surfaces and processes. Rather than "dead reckoning" using parameters, the profile graph helps relate the shape of your surface to what's happening in your process.