Laser straightness interferometer system with rotational error compensation and simultaneous measurement of six degrees of freedom error parameters

A laser straightness interferometer system with rotational error compensation and simultaneous measurement of six degrees of freedom error parameters is proposed. The optical configuration of the proposed system is designed and the mathematic model for simultaneously measuring six degrees of freedom parameters of the measured object including three rotational parameters of the yaw, pitch and roll errors and three linear parameters of the horizontal straightness error, vertical straightness error and straightness error's position is established. To address the influence of the rotational errors produced by the measuring reflector in laser straightness interferometer, the compensation method of the straightness error and its position is presented. An experimental setup was constructed and a series of experiments including separate comparison measurement of every parameter, compensation of straightness error and its position and simultaneous measurement of six degrees of freedom parameters of a precision linear stage were performed to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system. Experimental results show that the measurement data of the multiple degrees of freedom parameters obtained from the proposed system are in accordance with those obtained from the compared instruments and the presented compensation method can achieve good effect in eliminating the influence of rotational errors on the measurement of straightness error and its position. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America