2015

Additive Manufacturing – a new approach for individualized optical shape metrology

von Andreas, Heinrich

A. Heinrich, P. Maillard, A. Suckow, A. Grzesiak, B. Sorg, U. Berger, Proc. SPIE 9525, Optical Measurement Systems for Industrial Inspection IX, 95251T; doi:10.1117/12.2183168; 2015

In general in industrial manufacturing a larger lot size gives the potential to decrease the production costs. There is however also a big demand on individualization in order to cover all customer requirements. These individual requests of a customer lead to a production complexity and cannot always be covered within the current manufacturing processes sufficiently. In metrology we can see an equivalent situation. A metrology tool should be suitable for a large variety of parts. E.g. in shape metrology, the tool should be able to measure any kind of shapes (spheres, tips, steps, etc.). As a standard measurement tool is not adjusted to an individual measurement task, the best performance is not reached equal wise for all shapes.
In this paper we want to present a new approach for shape metrology of parts, fabricated in small lots: the individualized optical metrology based on additive manufacturing. Thereby the main idea is that the sampling signal of an optical metrology tool is individually adapted to the shape of the object to be inspected. This can be reached by an individual design of the optics, leading to a complex shape of the optical components. In order to manufacture these complex shaped optical parts, additive manufacturing (3D printing) is used.

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