Online surface roughness characterization of paper and paperboard using a line of light triangulation technique

Within both the paper and paperboard industries, real time monitoring and measurement of surface roughness of a paper moving at high velocities is an important and challenging area of research. The uniform surface, for an entire production, can be effectively achieved by monitoring and controlling the paper surface roughness, in real time during the manufacturing steps. Presently the majority of paper industries rely on traditional laboratory profilometers. The obvious limitations of lab profilometers are that these are slow, do not measure the quality of entire reels but rather deal with only a few small pieces of samples taken from the end of the reels and it is difficult to make any possible correction in the production lines without knowing the online roughness data. To eradicate the disadvantages associated with conventional measurements, an online prototype instrument has been developed that measures the surface roughness during the manufacturing steps, and is based on a line of light triangulation technique. The prototype technique will be of assistance in ensuring tight process control in order to maintain both a better and a uniform quality throughout the entire production. It measures the whole reel, meter by meter, in traditional units of roughness and is also capable of characterizing the topography in a wide range of wavelength spectra. The article presents the online analyses results obtained from the developed prototype. The real time measurements, in a paperboard pilot mill, have successfully characterized and distinguished 16 different grades of newspaper and paperboard reels including reels which have the same family of quality grades and materials.