Collecting and analyzing microstructures in three dimensions: A fully automated approach

Robo-Met.3D is a fully automated robotic serial sectioning device that was custom-built for three-dimensional (3-D) characterization of advanced microstructures at the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate. The machine is capable of automatically performing metallographic serial sectioning at unprecedented rates and at slice thicknesses between 0.1 µm and 10 µm. Imaging is also fully automatic, using either bright-field or polarized light microscopy, and the high-resolution digital images are combined using custom software to produce accurate 3-D datasets of the material microstructure in near-realtime. Robo-Met.3D is U.S. patent pending.