Construction of a High Precision Tactile Measuring Probe

With the appearance of micromachined mechanical elements and nanotechnology, increased demand can be observed for coordinate measuring systems having submicron accuracy. Probes are major components of such a coordinate measuring machine. They contribute to a large extend to measurement uncertainty of the CMM. In this paper a new low cost design is presented. The moving element of the probe head consists of the stylus and a crossform intermediate body with a small aluminium enhanced mirror at two end and at the center. The intermediate body is suspended on four springs made of berillium-copper folies. The displacement of the probe tip is calculated from the displacement and the rotations of the mirrors measured by modified optical pick-ups.