Using error separation to
test ultra high accuracy spindles
www.airbearings.com  7800 Powell Road  Hopkins, Minnesota 55343 USA
ABSTRACT
To test the accuracy of a modern ultra-precise air bearing spindle
for a diamond turning machine you need to use some sort of
error separation technique. But more than just deciding to
perform a reversal or a multi-probe test, you need to do a careful
assessment of whether or not your test hardware is up to the
task. This paper looks at what we at Professional Instruments are
doing to test our ISO 5.5 spindle, which needs to have axial and
radial accuracies of better than 12.5 nm at speeds from 500 to
10,000 rpm.
Figure 1. Error separation test of a Professional Instruments
ISO 5.5 air bearing spindle.
INTRODUCTION
The ASME B89.3.4 Standard Axes of Rotation provides a
comprehensive description of modern spindle error motion
terms [1]. Marsh describes the procedures to accurately capture
error motion of a spindle according to this standard [2].
Before advances in computers, data acquisition, capacitive
sensors and encoders enabled the development of modern
spindle error analyzers, error motion measurements were costly,
time consuming, and limited to low speeds. After careful
consideration, we chose to use a modified multiprobe technique
with an indexing plate that rotates a single probe for our testing.
This requires calibration of only a single probe and, more
importantly, it doesn’t require indexing the ball during our tests.
Error separation is important because two-lobe errors tend to be
the largest spindle and testball errors. Two-lobe errors in the ball
and in the spindle can cancel each other, leaving you with a
result much better than the true spindle error.
A one-piece 440 stainless steel testball was designed and built
specifically for this test, because any non-uniform bending of the
artifact will end up looking just like a spindle error. A flange-
mount is the best way to attach a testball to a spindle because
tapers or sleeves allow it to rock while rotating.
Figure 2. Dialing in the flange-mount test ball.
Dave Arneson, Henry Arneson, and Mel Liebers
Professional Instruments Company, Hopkins, Minnesota, USA
METHODOLOGY
Professor Marsh made us a Matlab executable program that takes three
individual test results from our Lion Spindle Analyzer and separates the
ball error from the synchronous spindle error. The result is filtered
(typically to 150 upr) and the asynchronous error from the zero degree
angle test is added back in.
Figure 3. Test apparatus with a single probe indexed to the
3 angles: 0°, 99.84375°, 202.5°.
We have experimented with reversal, but that has proved to be
cumbersome and complicated. In 2007 we built test equipment to allow
us to do error separation using the multiprobe method with a single
probe. Since building this test hardware, we have tested hundreds of
spindles and verified our results with cutting tests.
Figure 4. Test ball being inspected during manufacturing to
ensure it is round to better than the required 10 nanometers
at the equator.
RESULTS
It is important to test spindles at speeds they are to be used at. There
are many factors that go into what the accuracy of your spindle will be
and the speed you run at is one of them. Note the total radial error of the
spindle in Table 1. It measures less than 3 nanometers at 1,500 rpm, but
more than 10 nanometers at 10,000.
Table 1. Error motion summary of a recent spindle.
Fundamental axial error motions are extremely important for
diamond turning machines. The probe mount hardware we
developed positions the probe coaxially with the axis of rotation.
That’s important because fundamental axial error motion tests
are influenced by how close you line up the center of the probe to
the center of the spindle. You can actually get results that give
you a spurious lower fundamental axial error result if you aren’t
on center.
Figure 5. Cutaway of the error separation hardware.
Figure 6. Typical error motion result at 7,500 rpm.
CONCLUSION
You’re still going to need that shiny object. Measuring spindle
error motions to nanometers takes a combination of specialized
hardware, technique and software. Whilst error separation
techniques are a valuable tool, they have their limits. A rule of
thumb is don’t expect to get more than a 10X improvement in
accuracy, so if you have a ball that is round to 10 nanometers you
should be able to trust your results to 1 nanometer resolution,
but not down to an angstrom. Each Professional Instruments
model 5.5 spindle is put through a rigorous battery of tests
before it is allowed to ship, and it doesn’t ship unless it measures
under 12.5 nanometers on every one of those tests.
REFERENCES
[1] 2010 ASME B89.3.4-2010. Axes of Rotation: Methods for
Specifying and Testing (New York, NY: ASME)
[2] Marsh E 2010 Precision Spindle Metrology Second Edition
(Lancaster, PA: Destech Publications, Inc)
[3] Grejda RD 2002 Use and calibration of ultraprecision axes of
rotation with nanometer level metrology (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University)
[4] Marsh ER, Arneson DA, Martin DL 2010 A comparison of
reversal and multiprobe error separation. Precision
Engineering 34:85-91
Presented at the 33nd Annual Meeting of the
American Society for Precision Engineering
in Las Vegas, NV, November 4-9, 2018.