Sibress, manufacturer of measurement and analysis systems for quality assurance in flexo graphic and package printing, at Starnberg near Munich, has launched the newly developed SibScope microscope and SibView measurement software on to the market.
The newly developed Sibress SibScope microscope examines objects such as anilox,gravure and flexo plates, with high image quality and precision. At maximum magnification, objects are displayed full-screen with a size of 97 µm, via 80x lenses (relative to 60 cm screen diagonal). SibScope can be used both on round or cylindrical surfaces (from6 cmdiameter) as well as on flat surfaces.
The microscope is equipped with five plan a chromatic lenses (flat field lenses). The desired magnification is selected by simply rotating the nose piece. SibScope comes with the following lenses – 5x, 10x, 20x, 40x, 80x, as well as optional 4x and 100x. A variety of available mechanicalfilters make it possible to display surfaces in sharp detail and with rich contrast.
For object viewing, the user can switch between the 10x binocular supplied, and the built-in, high-resolution microscope camera. The image can then be examined on a PC monitor. The optical microscope can be moved in X, Y and Z directions (height adjustable). For height and depth determination, a digital dial gauge with a 1 µm resolution is integrated into SibScope. The manual height adjustment allows accuracies of significantly below 1 µm, so that even the finest surface structures can be brought into focus, and thereby examined in razor sharp detail.
The SibScope microscope can also be used to evaluate flexographic printing plates, with the optionally available Sibress Versatile @ Flex software. The flexo software automatically analyzes parameters such as dot percentage, dot size, screen ruling, and much more. The combination of both software packages makes SibScope an ideal solution for flexographic printing operations with their own repro, who want to analyze both their anilox rolls and their flexo plates. Moreover, due to its optical filter, SibScope is also good for engraving operations, or for inspecting printed circuit board structures. It is useful for all applications, where it is important to examine and evaluate the smallest details, through good image resolution and sharpness.
During measurement, the height measurement values are immediately transmitted to the newly developed, also by Sibress, supplied SibView software, via an interface which has been specially designed for the microscope. SibView also fully automatically displays the currently selected planachromatic lenses. Thus, the calibration parameters stored in the software are automatically selected for each lens, and measurements displayed correctly.
The system is delivered calibrated on the X, Y and Z axes. The SibView software offers various measuring tools, such as distance measurement, angular positions comparison, widths distance measurement with angular position, circle, circumference, and area. Additional comments may be added to the image.
When capturing with a height measurement, image and height measurements are stored together, and can also be reloaded as such. A specially developed image quick save function allows the user to save the image, with correspondingdepthandheightinformation,
in a fraction of a second, by pressing any key. The image and height and depth information is stored in a freely selectable folder, without having to assign the image a special name. On this basis, the captures can be used to create a 3D image using third-party software.
