Talk:Profilometer

I was shocked when I read this:

"Profilometer is a registered trademark of Precision Devices, Inc. for its measuring instrument used to measure a surface's profile, in order to quantify its roughness, vertical resolution is usually in the nanometre level, though lateral resolution is usually poorer."

I have worked on metrological systems (including surface profilometry) off and on for 18 years and we've always referred to the genre of surface roughness and contour meters as profilometers in the "metery" sense, not the commercial sense. So I found a web page for a company named "Precision Devices Inc" at http://www.predev.com and I see that they have some "Surfometers" but I do not see "Profilometer" as a product or name. I am attempting to contact them for clarification.

In any case; that a word is trademarked, is not necessarily the key fact that should be expressed on this topic. Since "Profilometery" and "Profilometry" both currently point to this page, I would like to spend a little time reworking the topic(s). Before I do I'd like to get as much feedback as possible from anyone interested in this subject.

--JwD (talk) 20:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
 * This is Wikipedia. If something is wrong about an article, it's fine to fix it- if other users disagree, they will generally let you know. -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 20:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I have been watching this topic for a litle while now waiting for someone to rework it. A lot of it is out of date as well, eg there are submicron radius styluses available now. Samlaw (talk) 14:02, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your suggestion. When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). -FisherQueen (talk · contribs) 14:05, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, but some of us are just plain lazy. And I supose I should really be doing some work rather than watching Wiki! Naughty me. PS, I like the standard macro. Samlaw (talk) 12:02, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Road Pavement Profilometry
I think it is time it got its own article. Opinions please. Samlaw (talk) 14:59, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Phrasing
So for this phrasing: "The stylus tracking force can range from less than 1 to 50 milligrams." would it be relevant to change the phrasing to "tracking pressure or weight" on the sample, or to change the units from milligrams to a unit of force? Or is this just nitpicky, irelevant. Small stuff. 1 mg goes to 10 microNewtons 50 milligrams goes to 0.50 milliNewtons, Xjxj324 (talk) 13:01, 21 March 2011 (UTC) xjxj324

What is intrasinc?
Sorry, I am neither from the field of profilometry, nor a native English speaker. Google did not help, I was wondering if anyone here knows - what is an "intrasinc vertical calibration"? (see the Time-resolved profilometers section) Is that some technique that the experts will know, or just bad English/a typo meaning "intrinsic"? Thanks! 132.181.43.165 (talk) 23:18, 14 May 2019 (UTC)


 * Added here. Should be intrinsic. The meaning is that some processes here (the optical ones) don't need to be calibrated against external mechanical dimension standards, because their measurement technique has an unchangable length standard (the light wavelength) built into them. Andy Dingley (talk) 00:02, 15 May 2019 (UTC)