Surface finish plays a major role on perceived product quality, and is the first thing a potential buyer sees. Today end-of-line repairs of the body of cars and trucks are inevitably to secure required surface quality. Defects that occur in the paint shop, like dust particles, are eliminated by manual sanding/polishing which lead to other types of defects when the last polishing step is not performed correctly or not fully completed. One of those defects is known as 'polishing roses' or holograms, which are incredibly hard to detect in artificial light but are clearly visible in sunlight.

This paper will present the first tests with a measurement set-up newly developed to measure and analyse polishing roses. The results showed good correlations to human visual evaluations where repaired panels were estimated based on the defects' intensity, severity and viewing angle.

An important parameter in the reduction of fuel consumption of heavy-duty diesel engines is the Power Cylinder Unit (PCU); the PCU is the single largest contributor to engine frictional losses. Much attention, from both academia and industry, has been paid to reducing the frictional losses of the PCU in the boundary and mixed lubrication regime. However, previous studies have shown that a large portion of frictional losses in the PCU occur in the hydrodynamic lubrication regime. A novel texturing design with large types of surface features was experimentally analyzed using a tribometer setup. The experimental result shows a significant reduction of friction loss for the textured surfaces. Additionally, the textured surface did not exhibit wear. On the contrary, it was shown that the textured surfaces exhibited a smaller amount of abrasive scratches on the plateaus (compared to the reference plateau honed surface) due to entrapment of wear particles within the textures. The decrease in hydrodynamic friction for the textured surfaces relates to the relative increase of oil film thickness within the textures. A tentative example is given which describes a method of decreasing hydrodynamic frictional losses in the full-scale application. © 2017 Staffan Johansson et al.

Manufactured surfaces usually consist of topographical features which include both those put forth by the manufacturing process, and micro-features caused by disturbances during this process. Surface characterization basically involves study of these features which influence the functionality of the surface. This article focuses on characterization of the surface topography of machined lead brass and lead free brass. The adverse effect of lead on human health and the environment has led the manufacturing sector to focus on sustainable manufacturing of lead free brass, as well as how to maintain control of the surface integrity when substituting the lead content in the brass with silicon. The investigation includes defined areal surface parameters measured on the turned samples of lead- and lead free brass using an optical coherence scanning interferometer, CSI. This paper deals with the study of surface topography of turned samples of lead-and lead free brass. It is important to study the topographical characteristics of the brass samples which are the intermediate link between the manufacturing process variables and the functional behaviour of the surface. To numerically evaluate the sample's surface topography and to validate the measurements for a significant study, a general statistical methodology is implemented. The results indicate higher surface roughness in turned samples of lead brass compared to lead free brass. © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd