Laser triangulation is widely used to measure three-dimensional structure of surfaces. The technique is suitable for macroscopic and microscopic surface measurements. In this paper, the measurement uncertainty of laser triangulation is investigated on technical surfaces for microscopic measurement applications. Properties of technical surfaces are, for example, reflectivity, surface roughness, and the presence of scratches and pores. These properties are more influential in the microscopic laser triangulation than in the macroscopic one. In the Introduction section of this paper, the measurement uncertainty of laser triangulation is experimentally investigated for 13 different specimens. The measurements were carried out with and without a laser speckle reducer. In the Materials and Methods section of this paper, the surfaces of the 13 specimens are characterized in order to be able to find correlations between the surface properties and the measurement uncertainty. The last section of this paper describes simulations of the measurement uncertainty, which allow for the calculation of the measurement uncertainty with only one source of uncertainty present. The considerations in this paper allow for the assessment of the measurement uncertainty of laser triangulation on any technical surface when some surface properties, such as roughness, are known.
Keywords: industrial inspection; laser triangulation; measurement uncertainty; speckle noise; surface characterization.