3D Surface Roughness and Wear Measurement, Analysis and Inspection

Honing Plates (Sharpening Stones)

September 26, 2023

Hone plates, or sharpening stones, are used to produce a fine edge on knives, scissors, and other tools. A kit of stones provides progressively finer grit sizes and spacings to

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How Do We Define “Roughness?”

September 13, 2023

“Roughness” can mean a lot of things, but in surface texture analysis, it has a very specific meaning. In this short video we look at how 2D and 3D surface

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Are you relying on average roughness (Ra) to control your surfaces? We made this short animation using data from Digital Metrology Solutions, Inc. to show that very different surfaces can all have the same Ra value...and that Ra alone can't tell you which one you've manufactured!

Average Roughness

July 31, 2023

If you rely on average roughness (Ra) to control your surfaces, check out this short animation. It shows that very different surfaces can all have the same Ra value…and Ra

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Friction and surface roughness, Real Area of Contact and Apparent Area of Contact, how the difference affects frictional force, Leonardo Da Vinci, Michigan Metrology

Friction and the Real Area of Contact

July 25, 2023

If I need to push a long, heavy block, it seems like it should be easier if I stand the block up rather than laying it flat on its face…and

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Dashboard surface, highly engineered surface texture with both fine surface roughness to scatter light and larger roughness to hide wear

Dashboard surface texture

July 7, 2023

When you’re thinking about the most engineered surfaces in a car, you may think of cylinder bores, clutches, brakes, etc. But we’d like to put one more item on your

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Cavitation erosion

June 22, 2023

Cavitation is the formation of air bubbles in a fluid as it goes from high pressure to low pressure. The dissolved gas can grow into bubbles—and under certain conditions those

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Surface texture - a bearing surface may look shiny as it wears because the peak material with short spatial wavelengths has been removed during the run-in period. Michigan Metrology

Why do some bearings look shiny with wear?

April 25, 2023

We tend to think of “new” surfaces as shiny and smooth, and “worn” surfaces as rough, dull, or uneven. But for a bearing surface, the opposite is often true: the

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surface texture filtering animation - Michigan Metrology

Visualizing “filtering” — an animation

April 18, 2023

Surface texture can be described as a spectrum of spatial wavelengths. “Filtering” is the process to isolate the wavelengths that matter for our application. But what does that really look

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Surface Roughness, Texture, and Tribology class and workshop, which will be held in Livonia, Michigan, May 3–5. 2023

Register for the Spring “Roughness, Texture, and Tribology” class and workshop

December 5, 2022

Registration is open for the Roughness, Texture, and Tribology class and workshop, which will be held in Livonia, Michigan, May 3–5. 2023. This live, in-person class offers a unique opportunity to learn

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Donald Cohen of Michigan Metrology is an expert in surface roughness, surface texture, 3D surface roughness measurement and tribology

A little tribology every morning

September 13, 2022

Years ago, I’d just completed one of my first major surface roughness measurement projects, and I was considering my next steps to form an actual business. I thought that I

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