Contact person
Hans Christiansson
Application engineer
Contact Hans
The advanced OptiTopo Expert unit
The unique OptiTopo technique used for print prediction quickly reveals the correlation between paper surface and print defects such as uncovered area or missing dots. You can use it in your own lab!
Purpose
The popular and easy to use OptiTopo Expert unit measure a very detailed 32x32 mm area of the paper surface and calculate the height variations in seconds using a patented shape from shading technique. The high-resolution height maps (4 million height values) gives a great advantage to traditional air-leak instruments like PPS and Bendtsen that has traditionally been used for print prediction on paper and paperboard. The possibility to filter the height map makes it possible to filter out non-interesting large-scale variations and only count the “dangerous” craters.
The OptiTopo Expert software can be used to answer:
- How do the surface defects look like?
- Why did we get a customer complaint from this sample?
- In which way does my new product differ from my old?
- Detailed fingerprint features of the surface roughness can be obtained.
- How should the surface of my product look like to ensure the desired print quality level?
- Can I fine-tune the filtering settings to find craters or hills that are potentially dangerous to reach my desired print quality level?
Method
“A picture is worth a thousand words”.
It is difficult to describe everything with numbers but combined with images you get a better understanding of the relationship between the paper/board surface and the print quality.
The OptiTopo Expert software offers the following images and figures:
- The surface as a gradient image, height map color scaled in microns, a crater maps where the craters are outlined at a decided depth.
- The fingerprint of the detailed surface roughness in the fine, medium and large scales.
- A very detailed surface variation (spectra) revealing periodic variation like wire marks.
A tool making it possible to plot the height profile along a line selected by the user.
The plots and maps are saved to a Word report, JPG-files and Matlab maps in the user interface and the calculated values are saved in an Excel file divided in different sheets. Both average values from several measured subareas and from each subarea.
If there is a need for new functionality, we can discuss the possibility to add this functionality to the OptiTopo Expert software as a new toolbox.
This measurement technique can be used also on other material, but it needs to be non-transparent, non-glossy surfaces.
Deliveries
Single-user license of the software package OptiTopo Expert.
Manuals describing installation and evaluation (in English).
The OptiTopo Expert version can either be ordered at the same time as the purchase of L&W OptiTopo from ABB or added afterwards.
