This study designs and characterizes a novel precise measurement system for simultaneously measuring six-degree-of-freedom geometric motion errors of a long linear stage of a machine tool. The proposed measurement system is based on a method combined with the geometrical optics method and laser interferometer method. In contrast to conventional laser interferometers using only the interferometer method, the proposed measurement system can simultaneously measure six-degree-of-freedom geometric motion errors of a long linear stage with lower cost and faster operational time. The proposed measurement system is characterized numerically using commercial software ZEMAX and mathematical modeling established by using a skew-ray tracing method, a homogeneous transformation matrix, and a first-order Taylor series expansion. The proposed measurement system is then verified experimentally using a laboratory-built prototype. The experimental results show that, compared to conventional laser interferometers, the proposed measurement system better achieves the ability to simultaneously measure six-degree-of-freedom geometric errors of a long linear stage (a traveling range of 250 mm).
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.