The continuing evolution of ultraprecision machining places an increasing need to perform surface measurement in the manufacturing environment. Development of on-machine surface measurement (OMSM) tools for ultraprecision machining processes will enable the reduction of measurement cycle time as well as the potential improvement of machining accuracy. In the present study, an in-house designed interferometer probe is integrated onto an ultraprecision diamond turning machine. System configuration, calibration scheme and various scanning strategies are first presented. The benefit of OMSM preserves the consistency between the machining and measurement coordinate system. Two applications of OMSM for ultraprecision turning process are further investigated. To further improve the surface accuracy, corrective machining is carried out based on the on-machine measured data. The profile accuracy of a cosine curve sample was improved after corrective machining with OMSM. Moreover, process investigation with OMSM was employed to model the effect of process parameters on the form error in ultraprecision cylindrical turning process. OMSM enables the consistent measurement of part coordinates for each experimental run, which is critical for acquiring a deterministic response for empirical modeling. A reduced quadratic model was built by means of response surface methodology and verified by the test for significance of the regression model. The confirmation tests show that the model predicted value conformed to the experimental value with a difference less than 4%.

In order to enhance the measurement availability for manufacturing applications, on-machine surface measurement (OMSM) is integrated onto the machine tools, which avoids the errors caused by re-positioning workpieces and utilizes the machine axes to extend the measuring range as well. However, due to the fact that measurement probe actuation is performed using the machine tool axes, the inherent kinematics error will inevitably induce additional deviations onto the OMSM results. This paper presents a systematic methodology of kinematics error modelling, measurement, and compensation for OMSM on an ultra-precision turning lathe. According to the measurement task, a selective kinematics error model is established with four primary error components in the sensitive measurement direction, based on multi-body theory and a homogeneous transformation matrix (HTM). In order to separate the artefact error from the measurement results, the selected error components are measured using the reversal method. The measured error value agrees well with the machine tool’s specification and a kinematics error map is generated for further compensation. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed kinematics error modelling, measurement, and compensation, an OMSM experiment of an optically flat mirror is carried out. The result indicates the OMSM is the superposition of the sample surface form error and the machine tool kinematics error. With the implementation of compensation, the accuracy of the characterized flatness error from the OMSM improves by 67%.