Metallurgical Microscope for Measuring Plastic Layers

Microscope World recently helped configure a microscope system for a customer who needed to measure the thickness of layers in a very thin piece of plastic (about 0.064mm). The customer wanted a system to perform quality control.

The thin piece of plastic was placed between two slides to hold it vertical beneath the ML7100 metallurgical microscope. The Moticam MC2300 camera was mounted on the trinocular port with a 1.0 c-mount. The microscope magnification was 400x, but because the setup involved a camera with a 1/2" chip and a 1.0 magnification c-mount, the camera's effective magnification was closer to 700-800x.


After capturing the plastic layers image, the Motic Images software (included free with all Moticam cameras) was used to measure each layer of plastic.

This image shows the four different layers of plastic along with their corresponding measurements in microns. The ability to quickly capture an image, make measurements and determine if a layer was the correct thickness allowed this customer to maintain quality control on their production process.