Development of a microscopic computer aided measurement system and its uncertainty

Microscopic inspection and measurement becomes essential for small critical dimensions in modern products such as integrated circuits, materials microstructure and the other micro-devices, therefore it has been widely used in many applications. In addition, the importance of computer aided measurement techniques as a means of controlling industrial manufacturing and testing high accuracy products increases with the general goal of improving the quality of products. In this paper, a novel computer aided measurement system for microscopic measurements has been introduced using a Measurescope and a developed software. The software, named MicroCAM, was fully written in-house using Microsoft Visual C++ as Windows application and it includes three modules. The first module is used to perform general measurements such as linear, angular and circular measurements (radii and center to center distances). The other two modules are used to trace 2D contours of small objects and to measure dimensions of 2D freeform objects. The MicroCAM may help in the filed of reverse engineering to measure small and complex objects. The results of the last two modules can be exported to AutoCAD as drawing files for further handling. The system was verified and tested for all modules and proved to be accurate for small objects measurement. The traceability and uncertainty of the introduced system has been expressed and the expanded uncertainty was calculated as 9.99, which provide a 95% level of confidence. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.