Identification of Surface Topography Scanned by Laser Scanning Confocal Microscope

Topography and surface roughness is defined as a set of surface textures formed due to used machining or other production technology. It is a key factor mainly for dynamically stressed components. Greater surface roughness negatively affects the fatigue strength of component or its wear resistance.The paper deals with the visualization and processing of data obtained from a laser confocal microscope Zeiss LSM 700. Data acquired by LSM software ZEN2009 are exported in the text form of 3D coordinates of the image data points and are arranged as a set of 2D profiles with resolution 1.10-7 m. The aim is to describe an alternative method of evaluating raw data extracted from z-stack of acquired TIFF images in order to achieve higher precision and identify the topography of the scanned sample surface. Different methods of data processing have been tested to eliminate deficiencies located mainly in the parts of the scanned surface with low intensity.