Profilometer Damages Parts? Extruded Plastic Tubing

B

bbarbee

#1
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.
 
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ScottK

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Staff member
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#2
Re: Profilometer damages parts?

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.
A mechanical stylus profilometer will definately scratch the surface. If you need a very high gloss finish this is not the way to go.

However - there are visual standard you can buy for a side-by-side comparison. That's what I have done in the past for machined/polished surfaces that had to be scratch free. That's the cheapest way to go. At least your operators have a standard to compare to.

Beyond that you can get into optical profiliometers. Which can get pretty expensive.

First question I'd have to ask is are you rejecting enough product to warrant the cost this device and the time to use it?
 
B

bbarbee

#3
Re: Profilometer damages parts?

First question I'd have to ask is are you rejecting enough product to warrant the cost this device and the time to use it?
Yeah, these are tight tolerance parts with thin walls (catheter liners) and if the tooling isn't right on, you lose not only what you've produced, but also the resin in the machine that you have to remove to change the tooling.
 

bobdoering

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#6
Re: Profilometer damages parts?

I have an OGP flash 500 in the lab. Do you know if the product you linked will attach to that?
I would contact your OGP representative. At one time it was available as an add-on to the vision systems, but I do not recall if it was only the Zip or both the Zip and Flash. Newer systems go for the TTL approach, but I am not sure that is retrofittable. So, best bet is check with them.
 
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