News

Robert L. Kersman Award of Excellence for the Best Paper

In the latest edition of the Aluminum Anodizers Annual Conference & Exhibition, the article titled "Using Optical measurement methods to assess the areal surface texture and shape on anodized aluminum surfaces" received the Robert L. Kersman Award of Excellence for the Best Paper. The article is the result of the work of a joint team formed by Andrés Arasanz, Niels Schwarz, Aitor Matilla and Jordi Mariné from Sensofar-Tech, an spin-off company of CD6, and Roger Artigas and Cristina Cadevall from CD6.

http://www.sensofar.com/news/aac-awards-best-paper-to-sensofar/


Abstract:

Any optical system used for the surface finish measurement of an anodized part needs to recover the signal from the air/ano layer, which is very weak in comparison to the signal on the ano/aluminum layer. Confocal based optical systems work very well for this purpose, but they have the drawback of having to use high numerical aperture objectives, only possible with high magnification, and thus the need to use stitching to recover millimeter scale. This makes the measurement a slow task and not suitable for production environments. On the other hand, Coherence Scanning Interferometry (CSI) based systems can evaluate larger areas while keeping good signal separation between both interfaces. Some optical measurement systems can combine both, Confocal and CSI, for the evaluation of surface texture in the aluminum and the oxide layer at the same time. This makes it possible to characterize defects in 3D prior to the anodization process as well as assessing the quality of the final product.