A study on the real-time compensation system based on Abbe principle for range accuracy of submicron measuring instrument

Abstract Range accuracy is an important parameter to evaluate the performance of laser tracker. However, the different field-testing methods of laser tracker influenced the range accuracy. In this paper, we propose a universal scheme for correcting range accuracy of laser tracker based on Abbe principle. The reasons for the Abbe error have been analyzed and the theoretical calculation and simulation verification have been done. Finally, we built Abbe error compensation system by using the autocollimator to compensate the distance accuracy error of home-made laser tracker. The experimental results show that the ranging accuracy after compensation can be improved from 1.828 ppm to 0.496 ppm. The method proposed in this paper is also applicable to the range accuracy calibration of other submicron measuring instruments.