Method and System for Measuring Surface Roughness.

The invention described herein was made in the performance of official duties by employees of the Department of the Navy and may be manufactured, used, licensed by or for the Government for any governmental purpose without payment of any royalties thereon. The complexity and precision requirements of mechanical products require improved methods of determining, producing and controlling the surface finish of both cast and machined items. Furthermore, increased production efficiency requirements and increasing rework costs demand accurate and consistent assessment of product quality. Surface roughness, or texture, is an important characteristic of both cast and machined products that describes the extent and average size of surface irregularities. Commonly expressed in micro inches, surface roughness is a measure of the arithmetical average deviation of surface irregularities from a hypothetical perfectly smooth surface and is typically denoted by uAA. Increasing manpower costs, increasingly competitive commercial environments and other cost saving measures, are challenging many traditional methods of evaluating surface roughness.