Compensation of errors due to incident beam drift in a 3 DOF measurement system for linear guide motion.

A measurement system with three degrees of freedom (3 DOF) that compensates for errors caused by incident beam drift is proposed. The system's measurement model (i.e. its mathematical foundation) is analyzed, and a measurement module (i.e. the designed orientation measurement unit) is developed and adopted to measure simultaneously straightness errors and the incident beam direction; thus, the errors due to incident beam drift can be compensated. The experimental results show that the proposed system has a deviation of 1 μm in the range of 200 mm for distance measurements, and a deviation of 1.3 μm in the range of 2 mm for straightness error measurements.