Comprehensive measurement model of geometric errors for three linear axes of computer numerical control machine tools

The geometric error measurement of computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools is developing towards automation and high precision. This not only improves the measurement efficiency, but also reduces the error caused by the long measurement time. This paper proposes a high-efficiency, automatic method of measuring 21 geometric errors of the three linear axes of CNC machine tools and establishes a comprehensive measurement model. The measurement system and model are applicable to linear axis geometric error measurement for all CNC machine tools. The measurement model was developed using rigid body kinematics theory and combined with the ray-tracing method. It mainly analyses the error crosstalk, system errors caused by optical components, laser beam drift, and non-parallelism errors between the measuring beams. ZEMAX was used to verify the model accuracy. Further, repeatability and comparison experiments were conducted to confirm the reliability and accuracy of the measurement system and model.