Replicast or Repro rubber

A handheld, precise gauge like 4D InSpec provides you access and direct measurement of a great many locations you might have had to use a reproduction casting of. It saves both the time involved, and the cost of the materials—one of our customers reported using $250,000 worth of replica materials per year, far greater than the cost of a reusable solution like the 4D InSpec.

Nevertheless, there will be places, even with the smaller optical assembly of the standard unit, or the fold mirror accessories that let you get into sidewalls, where a replica cast is still the best solution.

The good news is, 4D InSpec can process measurements of rubber materials quite well, so you can obtain 3D measurements of the cast defect. This is superior to slicing a cast of a defect and using a shadowgraph, because there’s no uncertainty about where to make the slice!

In the measurements below, you can see a scratch that has measured by 4D InSpec in the top image, and a replica of the scratch (inverted) in the lower image. The correlation between their dimensions is very strong—only 5 micrometers difference. It’s especially useful that the Max Depth/Height measures that dimension along the full length of the scratch in the measured area, so as not to miss a small variation. This would not have been the case using a stylus or shadowgraph.