The tribology laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has established an ongoing program to characterize various tribological surfaces used in industry, including high precision components such as aircraft rolling contact bearings and computer recording discs. However, the profilometer system used for characterizing surfaces was never designed for such high precision work or for other than flat surfaces. This project provides an optical table, a stylus profilometer, and an optical profilometer to enable surface measurements for high precision tribological elements and also curved elements.
