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Vol: 55(69) No: 1 / March 2010      

Design and calibration of a low cost measuring probe
Gyula Hermann
Department of Intelligent Engineering Systems, Budapest Tech, Faculty of Informatics, Bécsi út 96B, 1034 Budapest, Hungary, phone: (+36-1) 666-5535, e-mail: hermann.gyula@nik.bmf.hu


Keywords: measuring probe, submicron resolution, optical displacement sensing, measuring uncertainty

Abstract
With the appearance of micromachined mechanical elements and nanotechnology, increased demand can be observed for coordinate measuring systems having submicron accuracy. Probes are major components of such a coordinate measuring machine. They contribute to a large extend to measurement uncertainty of the CMM. In this paper a new design is presented in which the moving element of the probe head consists of the stylus fixed to a diaphragma flexure, made of berillium-copper foil with, a small aluminium enhanced mirrors at the centre. The displacement of the probe tip is determined from the displacement and the rotations of the mirrors measured by a modified optical pick-up and by two lasers focused on four quadrant diodes.
In order to test probes a calibration system with ~40 nm measuring uncertainty was designed. A high precision three-axis translation stage, with a working range of 100 x 100 x 100 μm, moves the probe stylus and the position of the stage is determined by three mutually-orthogonal plane mirror laser interferometer transducers having 1 nm resolution.

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