Optical technique to measure five-degree-of-freedom error motions for a high-speed microspindle

We present an optical technique to measure five-degree-of-freedom error motions of a high-speed microspindle. The measurement system consists of a rod lens, a ball lens, four divided laser beams, and multiple divided photodiodes. When the spindle rotates with its concomitant rotation errors, the rod and ball lenses, which are mounted to the chuck of the spindle, are displaced, and this displacement is measured using an optical technique. For this study, we decide the design parameters of the optical system using ray tracing, fabricate a prototype of the measurement system, and evaluate it experimentally. The results show that the measurement system has a resolution of 5 nm and can be used to evaluate high-speed microspindle rotation errors.