Laser light is used to investigate the surface texture of unsintered machined zirconia. Unsintered zirconia is a chalkylike material and when machined the resultant surface texture cannot be measured using conventional stylus techniques because the stylus damages the surface. Therefore the surface must be inspected in a noncontact fashion to reveal the surface texture. Laser scattering methods are well known to provide good surface texture characterisation so this approach was pursued. Zirconia samples were machined with varying feedrates and illuminated with a laser beam. The resultant scattering distributions for each of the surfaces did not differ in any significant way (regardless of the machining feedrate used) suggesting that the size of the microscopic irregularities of the surface are significantly greater than the illuminating wavelength. SEM photographs of the surfaces showed this to be true. Surface texture characterisation of unsintered machined zirconia using laser scattering was thus not possible. The properties of the material are such that the roughness of the machined zirconia is beyond the range measurable with most laser techniques.

Date Published: 22 September 1993
PDF: 5 pages
Proc. SPIE 2101, Measurement Technology and Intelligent Instruments, (22 September 1993); doi: 10.1117/12.156275

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2101:
Measurement Technology and Intelligent Instruments
Li Zhu, Editor(s)