Applications
Acoustic correction of interferometric measurements is applicable to a wide range of cases. The method can be used to improve the precision of any machine working in the short to mid-range distances.
AcWaCo works in every application by measuring the speed of sound along the laser beam. Therefore AcWaCo's performance is limited by the quality of acoustic measurements in a given environment. When planning an application, the following factors have to be taken into consideration:
- The longer the range, the weaker the acoustic signal and the worse the signal/noise ratio.
- The echoes from side surfaces must be weak and delayed enough to not disturb the signal.
- In dynamic applications, the faster the distance changes, the more difficult it is to measure the speed of sound.
These factors – range, speed of change of distance, and accuracy achievable with AcWaCo – are interdependent. Improvement of one factor may lead to degradation of others. Therefore, before we can say anything about the possible improvement achievable with AcWaCo in your concrete case, we have to know your boundary conditions: range, speed, accuracy and their desired priority. After that we can evaluate the performance achievable with the given requirements.
Application examples
- Maskless lithography systems
- Machine tools
- Precise XY-stages
- CMM
- Length measuring machine
- Manufacturing of diffractive optical elements
- Diamond turning
- High precision metal working machines
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Basic measurements and calibrations
- Linear
- Straightness
- Angular
- Flatness
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Future applications
- Calibration of step gauges and length bars
- Laser TRACER
- Laser tracker
- Large-scale metrology: Laser Rail calibration system
- Ultra-precision machine tools
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Weather station
- Real-time multi-axis acoustic thermometer
- Real-time multi-axis acoustic anemometer