The surface texture of a finished geometrically defined body is the fingerprint of all process stages of the manufacturing process. With machining processes like forming, cutting and abrasive processes including etching and laser texturing macro-and micromechanical deviations from the nominal geometry at the individual geometrical features are caused by machine, process, tool and workpiece dependent influences.
The effect of these causes on the deviations from the nominal geometry with different processes will be demonstrated.
For functional reasons more and more the nominal geometry includes defined deviations from simple form features like straight line, circle, flat and cylinder but also defined microgeometrical form features having dimensions in the micro-and submicrometer range and which are part of so called engineered surfaces.
Par examples it will be shown by which metrological means and by which 2-D and 3-D parameters the individual process stage for producing different defined surface textures can be assessed and supervised.
Concerning engineered surfaces with defined microgeometrical surface geometry it must be decided which geometrical parameters like size (diameter, length, curvature, depth), distance, position and orientation of the texture element e.g. of the pits of a compact disc or of craters of a laser beam etched part should be used for assessing the results of the process and how the roughness of the texture element and the surrounding area should be evaluated.
The discussion of the measuring procedures includes the effect of the properties of the probing systems (e.g. the tip radius), of the electrical filtering and the statistical character of the surface roughness.