Surfaces are designed into products to reduce friction, “store” lubricants, provide a high luster finish or be the proper texture to hold paint (but not show the actual surface of the paint). 

To choose the right 3D surface measurement tool, an engineer must carefully consider the size of the object, the speed of the scan and analysis, and a customer’s tolerance requirements.

In the dark ages before the prevalence of LED lighting choices, shop floors had to rely on consumer lighting options, like fluorescent and incandescent bulbs, or later, through xenon bulbs concentrated through fiber optics, according to Bradley Weber, Datalogic’s application engineering leader and industry product specialist for manufacturing.

How will this image be used? Do I anticipate any changes? What are your tolerance requirements? All these questions are paramount in determining the successful path of the data output and each are mutually exclusive of one another.