Development of a High Precision Telescopic Instrument Based on Simultaneous Laser Multilateration for Machine Tool Volumetric Verification

This paper presents the design of a high precision telescopic system consisting in three lines, with measuring principle based on simultaneous laser multilateration. The system offers the high precision of the interferometer systems and allows the autonomous tracking of a sphere joined to the spindle nose of the machine tool by simultaneous contact of all the lines. The main advantage of the system is that it allows data capture to be carried out in a single cycle thanks to simultaneous operation with at least three telescopic arms using a novel multipoint kinematic coupling. This results in a significant reduction of the time taken for data capture and improves measurement accuracy due to avoiding the effect of temperature variations between cycles and machine tool repeatability. The work explains the working principle of the system, its main components, and the design parameters considered for the development of the system. The system is simple to operate, compact, agile, and suitable for the verification of small- or medium-sized machine tools with linear and/or rotary axes.