Cutting tools are an essential component used in manufacturing parts for different products. Many cutting tools are manufactured with complex geometric shapes and sharp and/or curved edges. As such, maintaining quality control of cutting tools during their fabrication may be essential to controlling the quality of components manufactured using the cutting tools. In this paper, a 3D cutting tool inspection system, is presented. The architecture of the system, the cutter inspection workflow and some key technologies are discussed. The relative key technologies include two aspects. The first aspect is the system extrinsic self-calibration method for ensuring the system accuracy. This paper will elaborate on how to calibrate the orientation and location of the rotary stage in the coordination system, including the relative relationship between the axis of the chuck used to hold the tool and the rotary axis used to position the tool, along with the relative relationship between Z stage and rotary axis. Further, this paper will analyze self-calibration solutions for separately correcting the error of the squareness and optical measuring beam and the error of the alignment between a side scan and a tip scan. The second aspect this paper will address is a method of scan planning for automatic and effective data collection. Tool measurement planning plays a big role in saving tool measurement time, improving data accuracy, as well as ensuring data completeness. Ths paper will present a round-part oriented measurement method that includes coarse/fine section scans that aim at getting 2D section geometry in a progressive manner, covering the key sharp/curved edge areas, and the side helical scan combined with the tip round scan for shape-simulated full geometry capture. Finally, this paper will present experimental results and some field tests data.

Date Published: 10 September 2009
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 7432, Optical Inspection and Metrology for Non-Optics Industries, 743206 (10 September 2009); doi: 10.1117/12.828891

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 7432:
Optical Inspection and Metrology for Non-Optics Industries
Peisen S. Huang; Toru Yoshizawa; Kevin G. Harding, Editor(s)