The freeform surface quality is limited by the measurement, and form error cannot be convergent via compensation machining. This paper proposed a surface matching measurement strategy based on the least squares principle and iterative precision adjustment to precisely obtain surface form error after manufacturing by single point diamond turning. Through the coordinate transformation of translation and rotation, the measured surface was aligned with theoretical surface at the same coordinate system. The corresponding simulation was carried out to verify the performance of the proposed method, and the simulation results indicated that this method can achieve accurate alignment in a sub-nanometer range. Finally, with XY polynomial freeform surface as the ideal surface, compensation experiments were undertaken. The form error of freeform converged continuously after compensation machining for three times, during which the form accuracy of PV and RMS were down to 335 nm and 34 nm respectively from 1.4 um and 173 nm. The results showed that capability of the proposed compensation method was verified and the form accuracy could be improved effectively.
Free-form optical elements are more and more broadly used in modern optical systems due to their distinctive characteristics. In order to realize the high precision manufacturing of free-form optical element, the constraints on parameters of manufacture and measurement were established based on the designing parameters of free-form optical element. Meanwhile, the evaluation system for the machinability and detectability of free-form optical element were obtained by means of the corresponding mathematical model. Furthermore, the White Light Interference (WLI) stitching detection technology, coupled with the least square multi-parameter optimization algorithm, was used to solve shape-error measurement of free-form optical element. Additionally, a free-form surface compensation manufacturing mechanism of asymmetric shape error was established. Based on the above methods, the polynomial free-form optics were processed and measured. According to the surface shape measurement results, the same element was processed with compensation manufacturing twice. The surface shape precision was obviously improved from PV = 2553nm and RMS = 481nm to PV = 214nm and RMS = 19.9nm, which verified the effectiveness of the method. A significant value was unfolded in the engineering application of this method.
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