Correct shaft alignment is vital for most rotating machines. Several shaft alignment instruments, ranging form dial indicator based to laser based, are commercially available. At VTT Manufacturing Technology a device for calibration of shaft alignment instruments was developed during 1997. A feature of the developed device is the similarity to the typical use of shaft alignment instruments i.e. the rotation of two shafts during the calibration. The benefit of the rotation is that all errors of the shaft alignment instrument, for example the deformations of the suspension bars, are included. However, the rotation increases significantly the uncertainty of calibration because of errors in the suspension of the shafts in the developed device for calibration of shaft alignment instruments. Without rotation the uncertainty of calibration is 0.001 mm for the parallel offset scale and 0,003 mm/m for the angular scale. With rotation the uncertainty of calibration is 0.002 mm for the scale and 0.004 mm/m for the angular scale.

Date Published: 30 September 1998
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 3477, Recent Developments in Optical Gauge Block Metrology, (30 September 1998); doi: 10.1117/12.323118

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 3477:
Recent Developments in Optical Gauge Block Metrology
Jennifer E. Decker; Nicholas Brown, Editor(s)