In today’s cost-conscious manufacturing environments, quality assurance and process efficiency are critical to the success of any production facility. Superior process yields and high quality can be achieved through the adoption of accurate process monitoring in combination with fast feedback systems and control loops. Thickness measurement plays an important role in such monitoring.

To accurately measure the thickness of materials such as paper, plastic, copper, rubber or steel, industrial thickness meters in production lines make use of a radiation source (X-ray, beta or gamma) along with a photomultiplier tube that is coupled to a scintillator (typically NaI or CsI). Material thickness is measured in a non-contact way by determining the attenuated count rate of incident radiation. This data is sent immediately to the material processing instrumentation, so that adjustments or corrections can be continuously made in real time with a high level of precision.

When choosing a detector for industrial thickness measurement it is important to consider cost, active area, speed and accuracy. If the environment is harsh (in terms of temperature and shock/vibration), ruggedized detectors should also be considered. Hamamatsu offers many head-on photomultiplier tubes to satisfy all of these requirements.

• R6094/R6095 28 mm head-on PMT: high-stability, low-cost.
• R5611-01 19 mm head-on PMT: ruggedized PMT for scintillation counting.
• R1924A 25 mm head-on PMT: ruggedized, low-profile PMT for scintillation counting.
• R1306 51 mm head-on PMT: large active area and fast time response.
• R647 13 mm head-on PMT: low cost, small active area for smaller processing lines.
• R580 38 mm head-on PMT: designed for scintillation counting. Fast time response.

Please contact us for information on other products which can be used for this application.