New Approaches to achieve spectral information with Lab-like Certainty in Inline Process Monitoring

Presented by Peter Lamparter, Carl Zeiss Mecroscopy GmbH

Gaining spectral information with Inline Monitoring is crucial in Web Coating for process and quality optimization. Differing from laboratory measurements the accuracy of results from Inline Monitoring may be disturbed by a number of influences due to the production environment, e.g. fluttering of the substrate, or intrinsic characteristics of the measurement conditions in a Web Coater, e.g. non-contact measurements. With new approaches these unwanted influences can be either eliminated or compensated with appropriate means to achieve tolerances similar to laboratory results.

The most significant sources of errors were eliminated after a thorough assessment and ranking of the effects upon the measurement results. The final results show an excellent agreement between theoretical values, values measured in an off-line laboratory instrument and the in-line measurements.

Thus, spectral measurements with lab-like accuracy and precision can be performed successfully with in-line process measurement systems.