Free-form surface form error evaluation based on smaller-scale sampling points in touch-trigger probing

Surface reconstruction is an essential operation in the evaluation of free-form surface form error. As a feasible technology in free-form surface sampling, touch-trigger probing has been widely used in on-machine measurement and coordinate measurement machine. However, surface reconstruction quality is influenced by limited sampling point size. This study proposes a surface reconstruction method based on surface position error and deformation error model. Surface form error is decomposed into surface position error and deformation error. Then, the design surface is taken as a rigid body, and a point-to-surface function-based iterative algorithm is conducted to adjust surface location and orientation to best match the sampling points. The advantage of this algorithm is that it considers the probe dimension, so further compensation of probe radius is not required. The geometry of the adjusted design surface is modified based on thin plate energy minimization and point-to-surface function. Due to the inherent feature of the proposed method, geometric features of the design surface are kept. Experiments are conducted to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and results show that the proposed method can achieve lower error compared with existing methods. • Surface location error and deformation error are defined and computed to evaluate the form error. • Geometry of the measured surface is modified based on thin plate energy minimization and point-to-surface function. • Experiment results show that the reconstruction accuracy is improved by 37.9%, compared with an existing method.