Calibration of laser beam direction for optical coordinate measuring system

•A novel optical coordinate measuring system of low cost is set up in the paper.•An innovative calibration method of the laser beam direction is proposed.•A new parameter substitution method is proposed to solve the nonlinear equation sets.

For the purpose of measuring free form surfaces of some key parts in the aviation field accurately and effectively, such as blades, a non-contact optical coordinate measuring system is set up in the paper. A laser displacement sensor is mounted on the Z axis of a CMM via a turntable and adjusted to the suitable orientation according to the shape of the target surface. The combination of optical sensor and CMM can reach the full potential of them both. To enable the laser sensor to perform measurement in every direction, a calibration method used to determine the laser beam direction based on a standard sphere is proposed, the principle of which is analyzed in detail in the paper. In the calibration procedure, the sensor moves at an equal step along X, Y and Z axes respectively and then equation sets are established to calculate the unit direction vector of the line which the laser beam is on. In the process of solving the unknown quantities, a new parameter substitution method is applied. Finally, a gauging block and a sphere with known size are used to verify the method. As the experimental results show, the measuring errors in several directions are all smaller than 0.05 mm, which manifests that the calibration method proposed can meet the requirements of reverse engineering.