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Comparison of form measurement results for optical aspheres and freeform surfaces

12.01.2022

Comparing form measurement data for aspheres and freeform surfaces is an important tool for ensuring the quality and functionality of the devices used to take such measurements and may also allow the underlying measurement methods to be evaluated. However, comparing the highly accurate form measurements of such complex surfaces is a demanding task. It is difficult to analyze measurement results whose accuracies are in the range of several tens of nanometers root-mean-square, especially when comparing data with different, and anisotropic distributions of the 3D measurement points on the surface under test. In this paper, we investigate eight different 3D measurement point distributions that are typical of highly accurate measurement systems currently in use and demonstrate the effects of these distributions on the comparison results by using virtually generated data and applying different evaluation strategies. The results show that, for the examples investigated, the different 3D measurement point distributions can yield different levels of accuracy for the comparison. Furthermore, an improved evaluation procedure is proposed and recommendations on how to significantly reduce the influence of the different 3D measurement point distributions on the comparison result are given. A method of employing virtually generated test data is presented that may be generalized in order to further improve and validate future comparison methods.


Authors:

Ines Fortmeier; 4.2 Imaging and Wave Optics
Michael Schulz; 4.2 Imaging and Wave Optics


For further information:
Fortmeier et al 2022 Meas. Sci. Technol. doi.org/10.1088/1361-6501/ac47bb