Welcome to the Metal-Testers Surface Roughness Tester/Profilometer page. We cover a lot of ground in our surface roughness tester/profilometer product group. And the focus is on the most popular end of the market, skid type systems. From a simple small handheld model SRG-2200, designed for Surface Roughness Testing of flat or slightly curved surfaces to our more advanced SRG-4600 Surface Roughness Tester/Profilometer, which can do flats, rounds, OD’s or ID’s. Accessories such as profilometer calibration blocks(standard or NIST certified) and surface roughness tester stand are also offered.

Surface Roughness Tester Profilometer Measurement Guide
Surface roughness, for purposes of this forum, is the result of some machining process and its effect on the material surface in question.

Skid type surface roughness testers profilometers are common instruments used on the shop floor. A diamond stylus is traversed across the specimen and a piezoelectric pickup records all vertical movement. Peaks and valleys are recorded and converted into a known value of a given parameter.

Parameters differ in how they approach looking at peaks and valleys. The most popular parameter is “Ra”. Ra is commonly defined as the arithmetic average roughness. While the Ra parameter is easy and efficient, there are other parameters that can be more specific and useful depending on the application requirements. It is the parameters that enable us to define surface roughness.

Today, for the purpose of checking Ra values, the use of portable, hand held, surface roughness testers/profilometers are not only economical, but are digital and easy to use. These surface roughness testers/profilometers are a given necessity for any shop floor that receives work with Ra requirements.