Plastic Sheet Thickness Posted in: AccuProfile 820 Laser Scanner – Tags: Thickness Measurement
Last Updated: March 20, 2023
An Acuity customer is using AP820 laser line scanners to be able to measure the thickness of a dark plastic sheet material. The uneven surface profile is used to calculate the overall thickness and make sure the material maintains a minimum thickness requirement. The AP820 is very suited for difficult dark targets with its high dynamic range of the CCD chip in the sensor. Sensors can be synchronized to make sure the measurements are very accurate.
In this application, we have the Acuity AP820 laser line sensor, and this is the dash 60 model. It has a 60 millimeter depth of field. We’re going to look at measuring this black plastic material, and we’re going to demonstrate that we can measure the height of it. It has some little artifacts on it, little nibs on it, and we’re going to show that we can measure those nibs as well.
We place the material on a table with a hole cut in the black plastic material. We place a white ceramic block that is exactly one millimeter tall as a point of reference in our height scan. We’re going to show that we can measure that millimeter step height, which will give us a good proof of concept that we’re measuring the target material. And also, we’re going to go from the shiny white block to a wood surface to then the dark black plastic material, and we’re not going to have any trouble with those features.
As you see in the video, we measure those little artifact nibs really well, we have a couple little spurious reflections, but that can be filtered out pretty easily. As well we add a new measurement. We come in and measure the height. We can do distance or widths or heights or different positioning. We do a quick little calculation using this feature after we’ve calibrated the laser, and then we can see the number we’re getting is about 2.3 millimeter thickness of that material.
Lastly we take a look at the 3d capability of this laser profiler. As we’ll see, we scan across a couple of times to build up some more dense data. And now we click on some static points and we get a really good image of that part. All in all, a nice video showing a proof of concept on a similar material and the ability of the free AcuityView software program to make the needed accurate measurements.
Related Products
C6 Compact 3D Sensors
The C6 laser scanner series is one of the fastest 3D profilers in the world with a wide selection of models to serve a diverse range of applications. These profilers combine extreme speeds of up to 200 kHz, precise resolutions of up to 4,096 points per profile, and intelligent profiling algorithms to provide high-definition 3D profiles while minimizing distortions or noise. With flexible software SDKs available, the C6 is designed to perform while being easy to integrate and use.
AccuProfile 820 Laser Scanner
The AP820 2D laser scanner series offer a large selection of case sizes, measuring ranges, and diode/accessory options to be used in a wide range of measurement applications. The 2D/3D sensor performs very well on shiny or jagged targets and in environments with high ambient light. The sensor’s auto gain and high dynamic range allow for measurement in complex applications, even edge scanning on sharp targets.
Sarah has been our technical support and sales engineer for 5+ years. If you've ever reached out to Acuity Laser for tech support, more than likely, Sarah is the one who helped you.