Improvement of coordinate measuring machine probing accessibility

In this paper, the probe accessibility of coordinate measuring machines (CMM) in dimensional inspection is studied. Based on the previous methods of the accessibility map, the influence of the actual configuration of the probe on the accessibility is analyzed in detail. A method, which takes the effects of the probe length and volume into account, is proposed so that the shortcomings of abstracting the probe as an infinite half-line could be overcome completely. Finally, a feasible and efficient algorithm is given.