Hand-held surface profiler
Assignee3DM Devices Inc.
InventorsJohn Howard KEIGHTLEY, Adriano Goncalves CUNHA, Mark Aurele Louis DUMONT
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A light-emitting hand-held surface profiler for scanning and profiling the surfaces of objects has a transparent housing, a focusable light source, a conical mirror aligned to redirect light emitted by the light source onto a surface to be profiled, an imaging sensor and a lens aligned to redirect toward the imaging sensor light reflected by the surface onto the lens. The light source, conical mirror, imaging sensor and lens are mounted within the housing and positionally referentially coupled to the housing.
Claims20
A surface profiler, comprising:
- a transparent housing;
- a focusable light source;
- a conical mirror aligned to redirect light emitted by the light source onto a surface to be profiled;
- an imaging sensor;
- and
- a lens aligned to redirect toward the imaging sensor light reflected by the surface onto the lens;
- wherein the light source, the conical mirror, the imaging sensor and the lens are mounted within the housing and positionally referentially coupled to the housing.
A method of profiling a surface, comprising:
- directing light from a focusable light source onto the surface;
- detecting light reflected by the surface onto an imaging sensor;
- capturing an image by the imaging sensor, the image comprising a light line;
- scanning the image along a first plurality of scan lines in a first scan direction to determine a first set of centroids, each one of the centroids corresponding to a midpoint of the light line along one of the first plurality of scanlines;
- scanning the image along a second plurality of scan lines in a second scan direction to determine a second set of centroids, each one of the centroids corresponding to a midpoint of the light line along one of the second plurality of scan lines;
- scanning the image along a third plurality of scan lines in a third scan direction to determine a third set of centroids, each one of the centroids corresponding to a midpoint of the light line along one of the third plurality of scan lines;
- assigning a quality value to each one of the centroids of the first, second and third sets of centroids;
- selecting a plurality of centroids from the first, second and third sets of centroids, based on the quality values of each centroid;
- and
- determining a profile of the surface based on the selected centroids.
A method of calibrating a surface profiler having a focusable light source for projecting light onto a surface and an imaging sensor for detecting light reflected from the surface, the method comprising:
- providing a rotatable target;
- aligning the surface profiler to project light onto the target, by aligning an axis of the surface profiler with a rotation axis of the target;
- illuminating the target with light emitted by the light source;
- rotating the target about the rotation axis;
- and
- capturing an image of the illuminated target by the imaging sensor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.