Limitation of a Line-of-Light Online Paper Surface Measurement System

A new prototype device has been developed based on a laser triangulation principle to measure online surface topography in the paper and paperboard industries. It characterizes the surface in a wide spatial scale of topography from 0.09-10 mm. The prototype's technique projects a narrow lineof-light perpendicularly onto the moving paper-Web surface and scattered reflected light is collected at a low angle, low specular, and reduced coherent length onto the CCD sensors synchronized with the laser sources. The scattering phenomenon determines surface deviations in the z-direction. The full-width, at half-maximum of a laser line in cross section is sensitive in computation of the surface topography. The signal processing aspect of the image processing, for example, threshold and filtering algorithms are also sensitive in estimating the accurate surface features. Moreover, improper light illumination, intensity, reflection, occlusion, surface motion, and noise in the imaging sensor, and so forth, all contribute to deteriorate the measurements. Optical techniques measure the surface indirectly and, in general, an evaluation of the performance and the limitations of the technique are both essential and challenging. The paper describes the accuracy, uncertainty, and limitations of the developed technique in the raw profiles and in terms of the rms roughness. The achieved image subpixel resolution is 0.01 times a pixel. Statistically estimated uncertainty (2σ) in the laboratory environment was found 0.05 μm for a smooth sample, which provides a 95% confidence level in the rms roughness results. The depth of field of the prototype is ~2.4 mm.