Design and uncertainty of an opto-mechanical device for checking CMM touch trigger probes

This paper presents aspects of design of a test apparatus for checking touch trigger probes. It describes the probe test rig whose main objective is to check the probe repeatability and pre-travel variation (lobing effects). The results indicate that such a verification has been achieved with the additional advantage of testing the probe independent of the CMM error sources. The paper details the design characteristics of such a system far which the combined uncertainty is computed. Finally, it concludes that its accuracy is good enough for CMM probe performance verification.