Development of a high accurate gear measuring machine based on laser interferometry

Gear measuring machine is a specialized device for gear profile, helix or pitch measurement. The classic method for gear measurement and the conventional gear measuring machine are introduced. In this gear measuring machine, the Abbe errors arisen from the angle error of guideways hold a great weight in affection of profile measurement error. For minimize of the Abbe error, a laser measuring system is applied to develop a high accurate gear measuring machine. In this laser measuring system, two cube-corner reflectors are placed close to the tip of probe, a laser beam from laser head is splited along two paths, one is arranged tangent to the base circle of gear for the measurement of profile and pitch, another is arranged parallel to the gear axis for the measurement of helix, both laser measurement performed with a resolution of 0.3nm. This approach not only improves the accuracy of length measurement but minimize the Abbe offset directly. The configuration of this improved measuring machine is illustrated in detail. The measurements are performed automatically, and all the measurement signals from guide rails, rotary table, probe and laser measuring system are obtained synchronously. Software collects all the data for further calculation and evaluation. The first measurements for a gear involute artifact and a helix artifact are carried out, the results are shown and analyzed as well.