Improvement of coordinate measuring arm accuracy

The paper discusses the problems of coordinate measuring arm (CMA) accuracy. While featuring a number of advantages, these devices as yet do not qualify for applications where highest precision is required. We try to summarize the error sources contributing to the measurement uncertainty of CMAs. After that, we focus on elastic deformations as one of the main error sources and present a novel system, developed specifically for measuring link deflections. A detailed evaluation of the system was performed. The results show the system is suitable for its purpose and suggest that, by integration into a target device, an improvement of CMA accuracy is possible.