MEASUREMENT OF APERTURE AREAS USING AN OPTICAL COORDINATE MEASURING MACHINE

The use of an optical coordinate measuring machine (CMM) for the diameter measurement of optical apertures is described. The traceability and mechanical stability of the aperture areas are of importance for accurate photometric and radiometric measurements. Detailed evaluation of the measurement uncertainty for the aperture diameter is presented. High-accuracy mechanical CMM was used to confirm the validity of the optical CMM results. The difference between the contact and non-contact measurement was 0.1 mu m for the mean diameter result. If the required standard uncertainty for the mean diameter is of the order of 1 mu m, the optical CMM provides an efficient method for aperture area measurements.