Hi Clay,
Wow, that last image is amazing! More please. 🙂
btw, I think the forums are re-sizing your images, so the measurements/annotations you made to the image are too small to really see or read. Is there a way for you to show us those images without so much resizing? Maybe post them to your blog and then link that?
You also mentioned that CoorsTek gives measurements for surface-roughness of their ceramics in Ra. I’m not sure how they do those measurements, but I’m feeling unsure that they would use a contact profilometer to do it. This is because the extremely hard abrasives might wear out the stylus. The stylus that is dragged over the surface needs to be very sharp and precise. If it were dragged out along any very abrasive material, I think it would be damaged, or at least worn out. Maybe it’s a diamond stylus. I don’t know.
My guess (just a guess!) is that they use some type of non-contact profilometer to do their measurements. Since they are a huge company, one of the largest producers of technical ceramics, I would suppose they have invested in high-end optical (non-contact) profilometers and other fancy machines for doing surface measurements. Don’t know if they would tell you, but maybe you could ask them out of curiosity? 🙂
If you don’t mind me getting a bit philosophical:
I also only recently learned about profilometers. I call this an example of not-knowing what I don’t know. For example, I don’t know how to speak German, but I know enough to realize that, and I also know where I could go to learn to speak German. This is an example of knowing what I don’t know. I think this is an important point for two reasons:
If I know what I don’t know, then:
(1) I know how to gain more expertise.
(2) I can begin to assess my own level of expertise.
It’s very difficult to do (1) and (2) if you don’t know what you don’t know. There is always trial-and-error… But it’s probably better to leverage huge areas of research which have already been done.
One way I’m trying to figure out what I don’t know, is to read up on engineering. Engineers and manufacturers have had to measure cutting performance, material strength, friction, and surface properties for centuries (even if you start counting as late as the Industrial Revolution, not to mention the ancient Egyptians). So along these lines, I’ve been browsing engineering, manufacturing, and science topics in places like Wikipedia, research papers, the library, YouTube, Amazon.com, and company websites. Ideally, it would be great to also do some sharpening tests, and talk to knife makers, etc.
I would humbly invite others to do the same, and then share with us what they find.
Sincerely,
–Lagrangian
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