Characterization of surface topography by confocal microscopy: II. The micro and macro surface irregularities

Abstract

In part I, considering the autofocus and intensity methods of measurement, the principles and performance of a confocal microscope were discussed. In this part, the details of the experiments, conducted to measure and assess micro and macro surface irregularities of various machined planar and cylindrical surfaces, using a confocal scanning optical microscope (CSOM) are described. The three-dimensional surface topographies of various machined planar surfaces and also the form errors, like roundness and cylindricity, are measured and analysed. The significance of the set of new parameters, proposed for characterizing three-dimensional surface roughness and roundness measurements, is indicated. The effect of filtering on the variation in values of three-dimensional surface-topography parameters is studied. The performance of the CSOM is compared with those of conventional stylus and interferometric methods. The system is shown to have a great number of advantages in terms of three-dimensional surface mapping of planar and cylindrical surfaces and recognition of details and analysis for characterization of surfaces.