Comparison of tactile and chromatic confocal measurements of aspherical lenses for form metrology

Abstract

Both contact and non-contact probes are often used in dimensional metrology applications, especially for roughness, form and surface profile measurements. To perform such kind of measurements with a nanometer level of accuracy, LNE (French National Metrology Institute (NMI)) has developed a high precision profilometer traceable to the SI meter definition. The architecture of the machine contains a short and stable metrology frame dissociated from the supporting frame. It perfectly respects Abbe principle. The metrology loop incorporates three Renishaw laser interferometers and is equipped either with a chromatic confocal probe or a tactile probe to achieve measurements at the nanometric level of uncertainty. The machine allows the in-situ calibration of the probes by means of a differential laser interferometer considered as a reference. In this paper, both the architecture and the operation of the LNE’s high precision profilometer are detailed. A brief comparison of the behavior of the chromatic confocal and tactile probes is presented. Optical and tactile scans of an aspherical surface are performed and the large number of data are processed using the L-BFGS (Limited memory-Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno) algorithm. Fitting results are compared with respect to the evaluated residual errors which reflect the form defects of the surface.