Granite Surface Plate Calibration

Across industries, granite surface plates play a crucial role in making precise and accurate quality-control measurements on parts by serving as a trustworthy, extremely flat reference plane. However, despite the hardness of surface-plate materials, like granite, continual use and environmental conditions create wear on the surface plates, impacting the flatness and increasing QC gaging errors. Calibration is essential to ensure the surface plate can be relied upon as a trusted reference for the measurements, but traditional methods of calibration, such as electronic levels and interferometers, are difficult and time-consuming.  There is better way…

L-703SP Surface Plate Calibration System


S-1409 Plane6 Lapping Line View™

S-1409 Plane6 Lapping Line View™

The L-703SP Surface Plate Calibration System offers a much faster and highly accurate way to check the flatness calibration of granite and other types of surface plates:

  • Small, compact and light weight laser system with newly designed fixtures and Plane6 Surface Plate Calibration Software to speed up calibration process.
  • 30-60% faster than electronic levels, autocollimators and interferometers.
  • L-703S Spindle & Straightness Laser is a Geometry laser, not an interferometer, and much easier to use.  Breaking the beam is OK!
  • T-1297 3-Axis Wireless Straightness Target with a resolution of 10 µin. (0.25 µm), 2-axis, super-linear PSD sensor, Bluetooth communication and a Li-Ion rechargeable battery with 14+ hours life.
  • Target measuring base has ±10 µin. (±0.25 µm) mechanical repeatability.
  • Easy & fast setup with unique corner-locating tools set the straightedges at the proper border width without marking grid lines the plate!
  • Comes with built-in straightedge and dimension scale for fast data taking.
    • The standard kit comes with straight-edge lengths up to 72 in. (1.83 m) for plates up to (48×48 in. (1.22×1.22 m).
    • Add additional add-on edges for a total length of 126 in. (3.2 m) for plates up to 72×144 in. (1.83×3.66 m).  More can be added.
  • A measuring increment of .38 in. (9.5 mm) means you don’t need to “cheat” on the last point as most do with electronic levels.
  • Plane6 Software features a 3-step procedure that guides you through the process making the system easier to learn.
  • The L-703SP kit can also be used, along with Plane6’s Lapping Line View™ software module for a quick spot-check of measurement lines when re-lapping a plate that is out of spec.  It only takes 2-3 minutes to spot check the flatness of a line.  No need to measure the entire plate to see how well the lapping went.  A big time saver!  You can record up to 5 runs for each line and the data is plotted on the same graph.

Resource Center

L-703SP Surface Plate Calibration System Configuration