Development of a novel virtual coordinate measuring machine

Existing VCMMs (virtual coordinate measuring machine) have been mainly developed to either simulate the measurement process hence enabling the off-line programming, or to perform error analysis and uncertainty evaluation. Their capability and performance could be greatly improved if there is a complete solution to cover the whole process and provide an integrated environment. The aim of this study is to develop such a VCMM that not only supports measurement process simulation, but also performs uncertainty evaluation. It makes use of virtual reality techniques to provide an accurate model of a physical CMM, together with uncertainty evaluation. An interface is also provided to communicate with CMM controller, allowing the measuring programs generated and simulated in the VCMM to be executed or tested on the physical CMM afterwards. This paper discusses the proposal of a novel VCMM design and the preliminary results.