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I work for a company that makes extruded plastic tubing. It's important that the tooling in the extruder be polished before use or it will leave streaks and other defects in the tubing. We've relied on operators' inspection of the quality if the polish job but we now want to get more technical. I think a profilometer would be a fine tool for the job, but my boss is afraid the stylus will scratch the tooling and defeat the purpose of the test. In the past, I worked at a place that made fuel filters, and we did profilometer readings on machined aluminum sealing surfaces all the time without issue.
What are your thoughts on the issue? The tooling I need to measure is made of either steel, brass, or PEEK plastic.
Alternately, since I'm looking for a high polish, does anyone have an opinion about using a glossimmeter to get the data I'm after? I don't have a spec per se at the moment, so if I get gloss measurements instead of Ra/Rz, that's ok as long as I can use them across the board.
What are your thoughts on the issue? The tooling I need to measure is made of either steel, brass, or PEEK plastic.
Alternately, since I'm looking for a high polish, does anyone have an opinion about using a glossimmeter to get the data I'm after? I don't have a spec per se at the moment, so if I get gloss measurements instead of Ra/Rz, that's ok as long as I can use them across the board.