Design of a six-degree-of-freedom geometric errors measurement system for a rotary axis of a machine tool

This paper proposes a new kind of non-contact optical measurement system, which combines with a polygon mirror and a conical lens to achieve the purpose of simultaneously measuring six-degree-of-freedom (6 DOF) geometric errors for a rotary axis of a machine tool. At the beginning, we used the Zemax software to construct the proposed optical structure and observe the change of light spots on the detectors. Then, we built the proposed optical structure on the Matlab software by using the skew-ray tracing method, which used to present the actual condition of light spot change and compare with the simulation results. Then, we designed the appropriate fixtures to place the system structure on a rotary axis in a laboratory environment. After completing the laboratory-built prototype, we analyzed the effects of different geometric errors on the detectors at different angular positions of a rotary axis of a machine tool. The proposed measurement system simultaneously measured 6 DOF geometric errors of the rotary axis, and the experimental results were compared with those of two dial gauges by using the measurement method of ISO 230–7. The experimental results show that the maximum deviation ranges of the radial motion error in X axis, the radial motion error in Y axis, the tilt motion error around X, and the tilt motion error around Y are ±4.7 µm, ±6.0 µm, ±3.6 arcsec, and ±8.1 arcsec, respectively.