Development of a steel ball center alignment device based on Michelson interference concept

Hau-Wei Lee; Chien-Hung Liu

doi:10.1063/1.4895669

Development of a steel ball center alignment device based on Michelson interference concept

Rev Sci Instrum. 2014 Sep;85(9):095115. doi: 10.1063/1.4895669.

Authors

Hau-Wei Lee¹, Chien-Hung Liu²

Affiliations

¹ Center for Measurement Standards, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan.

PMID: 25273780
DOI: 10.1063/1.4895669

Abstract

This study presents a ball center alignment method based on the Michelson interferometer where one of the reflecting mirrors is replaced by a lens and steel ball. By locating the ball away from the focal length of the lens, the beam is reflected as a spherical wave. The interference ring formed by the planar and spherical waves can be clearly observed using a camera without a lens. The distance of the offset of the ball center can be enhanced by more than 140% using this method. A fast ring profile fitting method can reduce circle fitting time to around a third of that needed for Hough transformation.