SBIR Phase I: In Situ Three-dimensional Surface Roughness Gauge

该小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将展示第一个能够在生产环境中现场量化表面粗糙度的测量系统的可行性。 当前的车间系统几乎完全是基于触控笔的二维系统，这些系统很脆弱，无法测量复杂的几何形状，并且拥有成本很高。 车间 3D 粗糙度系统将实现更大的采样、更快的过程反馈并缩短获得结果的时间，这将增强美国医疗设备、航空航天、运输和国防等众多行业的竞争力。所有精密加工的部件都会标明表面粗糙度或纹理，但使用现有接触式量规获得一致的结果既困难又耗时。 据信，车间非接触式粗糙度测量设备可以赢得显着的市场份额，在证明与现有值得信赖的实验室技术的相关性后，销售额将高达 5000 万美元/年。 此外，几乎所有加工表面上可靠且易于获得的粗糙度信息将为精密制造商提供更高的质量、使用寿命和美观度，从而提高竞争力并减少各行业的浪费。 该项目的智力优势在于它利用了增材制造、精密光学、微处理、图像传感器和干涉算法等多个领域的最新进展，以在可部署在制造环境中的抗振设备中实现纳米级垂直分辨率。 最接近的类似产品的垂直分辨率比此处建议的差 100 倍以上，并且建议的性能目标对实现高分辨率和手持功能提出了重大挑战。第一阶段的成功将证明，各个领域的进步之间的显着协同作用可以结合起来，从而比上一代产品显着提高性能。此外，如果成功，制造商将能够在更多类型的表面上获得更广泛的过程控制参数，并且能够通过更快、更准确的生产周期反馈来显着提高质量和产量。 第一阶段计划的输出将是第一个设备，可以在车间环境中提供给客户进行演示。 该设备将与现有技术相关联，同时解决许多关键问题，例如对准困难、通过接触测量刮擦表面以及缺乏三维表面信息。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will demonstrate feasibility of the first metrology system capable of quantifying surface roughness in three dimensions in situ in production environments. Current shop floor systems are almost entirely two-dimensional stylus-based systems that are fragile, incapable of measuring complex geometries and have high cost of ownership. A shop-floor, 3D roughness system will enable greater sampling, faster process feedback and improved time-to-results which will enhance competitiveness across a wide range of U.S. industries including medical devices, aerospace, transportation, and defense. All precision machined components call out surface roughness or texture, yet achieving consistent results with existing contact gauges is difficult and time consuming. It is believed that a shop floor, non-contact roughness measurement device could gain significant market share, with sales upwards of $50M/year upon proving correlation with existing trusted laboratory techniques. Also, trusted, readily available roughness information on almost any machined surface will enable enhanced quality, lifetime, and aesthetics for precision manufacturers, improving competitiveness and reducing waste across a variety of industries. The intellectual merit of this project is due to its leveraging of recent advances in a variety of fields including additive manufacturing, precision optics, microprocessing, image sensors and interferometric algorithms to achieve nm-scale vertical resolution in a vibration-immune device deployable in manufacturing environments. The closest similar product has vertical resolution more than 100X worse than is proposed here and the proposed performance goals present significant challenges to achieve both high resolution and hand-held capability. A successful Phase 1 will prove that significant synergies between advances in various fields can be combined to significantly advance performance over prior generation products. Also, if successful, manufacturers will have access to a far greater range of process control parameters on more types of surfaces and will be able to improve quality and yield significantly via faster and more accurate feedback into their production cycle. The output of this Phase 1 program will be a first article device that can be brought to customers for demonstration in a shop floor environment. The device will correlate with existing techniques while solving many key issues, such as alignment difficulty, scratching surfaces via a contact measurement, and lack of three-dimensional surface information.