Low cost optoelectronic system for drying paint monitoring

E. RUBINSZTAIN; A. LUTENBERG; M. TRIVI; F. PEREZ QUINTIAN

Puebla

Congreso; 22nd Congress of the International Commission for Optics: Light for the Development of the World; 2011

International Commission for Optics

In previous works we reported several speckle interferometry methods applied to analyze paint drying processes. In this paper we present the development of a low cost optoelectronic system for monitoring the drying status of different types of paints. The system is composed by a laser diode, a linear CCD sensor and a microcontroller. One of the key points of the system is the algorithm that processes the speckle patterns produced by the laser beam scattered from the paint. The temporal evolution of the speckle carries information of the paint status. The proposed algorithm modifies one of its parameters to follow the speckle rate of change, allowing a real-time measurement of the drying process. The results obtained with this system are compared to the ones obtained by the method that measures the paint weight loss in time, due to the solvent evaporation, and to the results from other methods that process the temporal evolution of the speckle with different algorithms.