Thickness measurement is one of the most important elements in the process of achieving high quality result in any production facility. Since quality assurance and process efficiency are critical to the success of any production facility, thickness measurement is required by any cost-conscious manufacturing environments for monitoring the accuracy.
Thickness measurement is commonly used to accurately measure the thickness of materials such as paper, plastic, copper, rubber or steel. It is found that industrial thickness meters in production lines make use of a radiation source (X-ray, beta or gamma) along with a photomultiplier tube that is coupled to a scintillator (typically NaI or CsI) in the process of measurement.
In this method of thickness measurement, there is no need any contact with the materials since the measurement is determined by the attenuated count rate of incident radiation. Then, this data is sent immediately to the material processing instrumentation, so that adjustments or corrections can be continuously made in real time with a high level of precision.
Furthermore, the other method of thickness measurement is by using NDT technologies. The NDT technologies are used to measure material thickness in a wide variety of industries, both for manufacturing quality control and for in-service monitoring.
In many cases, a primary advantage of NDT is the ability to precisely measure wall thickness in situations where access is available to only one side of a test piece, as in a pipe or tank, or where simple mechanical measurement is impossible or impractical for other reasons, such as part size or access limitations. In this thickness measurement, ultrasonic thickness gages can be used on virtually any engineering material, including most metals, plastics, glass, ceramics, rubber, fiberglass, and composites.
The followings are going to deliver further information about two types of thickness measurement that can be applied to measure the thickness of certain materials. So, just take a look at these three types of thickness measurement and you will know how to obtain accurate measurement.
Thickness Measurement (single and multi-track)
This thickness measurement is performed directly at the point where the laser beam hits the object in the case of stationary objects and along the line which the laser point projects onto the material in the case of measuring objects passing by underneath the sensor.
The measurement can be made as a reference measurement with one sensor or as a thickness measurement with two sensors per measuring track. C-brackets, 0-frames or complete measuring modules with automatic calibration and their own drive belts are available as measuring frames.
Linear Thickness Measurement
This thickness measurement takes place with OPTISCAN laser scanners or light-section sensors or over greater widths with a traversing mechanism and two punctiform OPTIMESS laser sensors. The lateral position is picked up as an additional value apart from the distance information by the laser scanners so that the thickness or the thickness profile along the scanned line is recorded.
Over smaller widths the laser scanners or light-section sensors offer the advantage that no additionally moved parts are necessary and scanning frequencies of about 20 Hz are possible. On the other hand, the traversing mechanics, designed as a C-frame, offer the possibility of reaching measuring widths up to 5 meters.
After all, now you can know that thickness measurement plays important role in manufacturing environments. When choosing the equipment for measuring the thickness, it is important to consider cost, active area, speed and accuracy.
