Integration of an isotropic microprobe and a microenvironment into a conventional CMM

This paper describes the experimental verification of the novel IMT-PTB microprobe combined with a uniquely designed microenvironment. The microprobe consists of three silicon-based parallelograms stacked orthogonally, which leads to high isotropy. The probe tip deflections are detected in 3D with the help of piezoresistors placed in the parallelograms. The microenvironment facilitates and improves the measurement of workpieces with sub-millimeter features. The new microprobe and the microenvironment were integrated into a commercial coordinate measuring machine (CMM). To evaluate the microprobe performance, PTB produced and calibrated three reference objects: a cube, a sphere, and a microgear measurement standard. The differences between the calibration values and the measurement results obtained by the microprobe were in the sub-micrometer range. Furthermore, the microprobe was compared with the standard probing system of the gear measuring machine by measuring the reference objects with identical parameters. The results show the excellent performance of the micro probing system, thereby extending the capability of the CMM for high-precision measurements of complex workpieces at the microscale.