Abstract
Aiming at the shortcomings of traditional contact measurement methods such as low measurement efficiency, high cost and low accuracy, a non-contact optical measurement method based on the laser displacement sensor is proposed. According to the relevant regulations of the coaxiality error evaluation standard and the structural characteristics of the compound gear shaft, we have designed and built a set of supporting software system as well as a hardware test platform. In this paper, the distance difference threshold and scale threshold methods are used to eliminate outlier data. The least squares circle is selected to calculate the center of the circle and the minimum containment cylinder axis method is used as the reference axis of the composite gear shaft. Compensated by the standard step shaft calibration, the coaxiality error of the composite gear shaft can be measured to be within 0.01 mm in less than two minutes. The range value of the multi-section measurement test is 0.065 mm. The average coaxiality error is .
Due to various uncertain factors, there is always a certain error between the actual size of the final product and the ideal size, which results in the difference between the geometric features and the ideal situation in the machining process. Concentricity is a type of position error. In some occasions of rotary motion, part of the reference is eccentric. The mechanical transmission device will generate vibration and noise which will directly damage the device more seriously.
Traditional coaxiality detection methods for the outer contour of shaft parts mainly include the rotation axis method, coordinate method, tip method, simulation method, etc. The common feature of most traditional measurement methods is that the data points are collected by contacting the probe with the surface of the part to be measured. Whether the parts meet the requirements depends on the measurement data obtained according to the change in the reading of the indicator. These are all contact measurement methods, which can achieve high accuracy but are too slow for complex parts. The new non-contact measurement methods mainly include laser ranging metho
The bevel gear-spline compound gear shaft is a relatively common type of composite shaft parts which consists of spline, cylindrical shaft and bevel gear. The real object is shown in

Fig.1 Bevel gear-spline compound gear shaft
At present, the coaxiality measurement method of the bevel gear-spline compound gear shaft part is also contact. The measurement tool is used to clamp the part rotated manually by the inspector. The coaxiality is calculated based on the data obtained from the contact between the probe and the surface of the part. The measurement results obtained by using the above measurement methods can be relatively easily affected by various factors such as measurement devices, environmental disturbances and manual operations, which lead to lower accuracy of the final measurement results and more time waste. According to the research experience in the field of form and position error measurement, we have designed and built a set of coaxiality measurement experiments platform based on laser ranging technology with laser displacement sensors to measure the coaxiality of multi-specification bevel gear-spline compound gear shaft
The Chinese machinery industry standard “JB/T 7557—1994 coaxiality error detection

Fig.2 Basic process of coaxial error measurement
Based on the above-mentioned basic measurement method of coaxiality error, we use non-contact laser displacement sensors to obtain the information of each measurement element on the part to be tested by measuring the distance from the sensor to the surface of the part. The measurement scheme is shown in

Fig.3 Schematic diagram of coaxial optical measurement scheme
During the measurement, the two laser displacement sensors measure the above spline part and the bevel gear part respectively while the compound gear shaft rotates at a constant speed ω. The distances from the sensors to the highest points of the two tooth top circles are within the range of the respective sensors which can move along the axis of the part to be measured. The proposed basic measurement process is shown as follows.
(1) Look for multiple sections to be measured, which are perpendicular to the rotation center axis in the spline part of the compound gear shaft.
(2) For a certain section, a series of distance values of measurement points on the section are obtained by a laser displacement sensor during a part of the rotation of the part.
(3) After data processing, the measured series of distance values are converted into the profile information of the section under the measurement coordinate system.
(4) Process the profile information of the section to obtain the coordinates of the center point of the section to be measured in the measurement coordinate system.
(5) Perform the above processing on the other sections of the spline part to obtain the coordinates of the center points of all the tested sections of the spline part.
(6) The coordinates of the center point of each section of the spline part are processed to obtain the reference axis equation of the coaxiality error evaluation.
(7) Perform operations similar to steps(2—5) on the bevel gear part to obtain the positions of the center points of all the sections to be measured.
(8) According to the coaxiality evaluation criterion, determine the coaxiality error value of the bevel gear part relative to the reference axis of the spline part.
The overall structural design of the test system hardware platform is shown schematically in

Fig.4 Overall structure of the test platform
The positioning module and the sensing and measuring module are shown in

Fig.5 Positioning module and sensor measurement module
The host computer software of the measurement system is divided into five modules: User management module, system setting module, system calibration module, part measurement module and data processing module. The overall structure design is shown in

Fig.6 Overall structure design of the host computer software
The software test flow chart of the coaxial optical measurement system can be summarized as shown in

Fig.7 Test flow chart
Due to installation errors, the laser is not vertically hit on the axis of the standard part, so we eliminate errors through system calibration. The calibration principle is shown in
(1) |
(2) |

Fig.8 Principle of step axis measurement
After calibration, the radius of the section circle is shown as
(3) |
where represents the distance measured after calibration and the radius of the actual measured part.
By analyzing the positive profile data of spline and bevel gear, we find that the tops, roots, and sides of the teeth are distributed continuously and evenly at data points near the central position with little fluctuation. But the data points at the junction fluctuate relatively largely leading to poor continuity. In order to extract the center of the circle, we use distance difference threshold and scale threshold methods to strip data. When fitting the center of the ring, we need to remove the root circle data and only keep the top circle part. The plane point set convex package metho
Part to be tested | Raw data | Outlier processing | After the top data processed | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Convex bag processing | Approximation processing | |||
Bevel gear | 20 000 | 8 125 | 312 | 4 330 |
Obviously, approximation processing preserves valid data better. Therefore, we choose approximation method to process cross-sectional profile data. The results of bevel gear data are shown in

Fig.9 Results of bevel gear part of the top tooth extract processing
In order to obtain the coaxiality of the part, the base axis needs to be extracted. We use four methods to fit the center of the circle, which are least squares circle, minimum circumscribed circle, maximum inscribed circle and minimum zone circle

Fig.10 Change curves of the bevel gear
There are three ways to process the data of the base axis, which are the minimum containment cylinder axis method, the least square midline method and the method of connecting head and tail center points. After comparison, we choose the minimum containment cylinder axis method to fit the base axis. Suppose that the axis passes through the point , with the direction vector =. The distance from the center points to the axis can be obtained by
(4) |
(5) |
The particle group algorithm is selected to solve the minimum inclusive cylindrical axis at the center of each section.
Number of particles | Learning factor | Learning factor | Inertial weight | Maximum number of iterations | Argument dimension |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
30 | 1.494 45 | 1.494 45 | 0.729 | 2 000 | 4 |

Fig.11 Flowchart of data processing algorithm
The minimum inclusion area calculation is performed for each interface center point after obtaining the base axis equation. We take twice the maximum the distance from the reference axis as the coaxiality error.
The design dimension of the distance between the spline and bevel gear laser displacement sensor and the rotation center axis is 90 mm and the range of the sensor is 45—95 mm. In order to make the surface of the part to be measured within the range of the sensor, the radius of the stepped axis for calibration should be 0—45 mm. The actual calibration step axis is shown in

Fig.12 Ladder shaft for calibration
Sensor | Distance of rotation center axis /mm | Offset distance in horizontal direction/mm |
---|---|---|
Spline laser displacement sensor | 89.584 | 2.666 |
Bevel gear laser displacement sensor | 89.663 | 0.902 |
We use the calibrated laser displacement sensor to perform distance measurement on three sections to obtain the profile information of the section to be measured. Then we calculate the coordinates of the center point of each section profile. The operation is repeated for 10 times. After analyzing the coordinate changes of the contour center of each section for the three sections to be measured on the cylindrical part of the compound gear shaft, we calculate the circle runout error of the data points of the tooth top contour for each group of cross-section profile data. The 10 measurement results of the spline part and the bevel gear part are shown in

Fig.13 Normal section profile center coordinate change curves of the spline part and the bevel gear part cross section
According to the axial length of the flower key part and the gear part, we look for seven sections to be measured in the flower key part with 2 mm of the cross-section spacing as well as six sections to be measured of the bevel gear part with the same section spacing for compound gear shaft parts. Then we use the calibrated two laser displacement sensors to measure the distance between the spline part and the gear part to be measured to obtain the profile information of each measured section. After that the coordinates of the center point of each profile are calculated. According to the base axis fitting method, we calculate the minimum containment cylinder axis equation of the center point of each section of the spline part as the reference axis. Then we use the reference axis to evaluate the coaxiality error for the center points of the seven sections to be measure

Fig.14 Curve of coaxiality error of compound gear shaft
By analyzing the possible influence of the hardware structure, data processing method and external environment of the measurement system on the coaxiality measurement process, various factors that may introduce errors into the measurement results are summarized as follows.
The data collection process of the sensor may be affected by he disturbance of the external environment which will result in outliers with large deviations in the cross-sectional profile of the part to be measured. Through the distance difference threshold and scale threshold methods, the effect of this abnormal data on subsequent data processing can be effectively removed.
The measurement error of the laser displacement sensor itself is 10 μm, which is determined by the manufacturing accuracy of the sensor. There is a gap between the roller and the rail shaft when the linear motion assembly is sliding. According to the existing experimental conditions in the laboratory, it is relatively difficult to process and assemble parts to meet the accuracy requirements of theoretical design.
According to the results of the single-section circle center measurement test, the normal section profile processing method is used to process the profile information of the section in which the particle group algorithm is used to solve the minimum containment cylinder axi
The range of the coaxial optical measurement system test platform is mainly related to the range of the laser displacement sensor and the distance from the rotation center axis to the laser displacement sensor. The range of the two sensors is from 45 mm to 95 mm. According to the system calibration experiments, the distance between the spline laser displacement sensor and the rotation center axis is 89.584 mm with the bevel gear laser displacement sensor and the rotation center axis is 89.663 mm. Based on the above information, a schematic diagram of the measurement range is shown in

Fig.15 Schematic diagram of measurement range
Based on the above information, the coaxial optical measurement test platform is built for this project. The system range is shown in
Parameter | Spline tooth tip circle diameter/mm | Bevel gear tip diameter/mm | Total length of the part under test/mm |
---|---|---|---|
Range | 0—89.168 | 0—89.326 | 0—200 |
The measurement accuracy of the measurement system is evaluated and analyzed based on the measurement results of 10 sets of coaxiality errors. After bringing the measurement result in
(6) |
The uncertainty evaluation and analysis of the measurement system is performed based on 10 sets of coaxiality error measurement results. After bringing 10 sets of measurement results in
(7) |
(1) This paper introduces how to measure the coaxiality of a bevel gear-spline compound gear shaft by non-contact optical measurement method. According to the measurement process and principle, a measurement platform hardware as well as software platform are designed and constructed. The test flow of the entire measurement system is anylized to achieve rapid and accurate measurement and evaluation of coaxiality error.
(2) After the calibration, we get the laser offset of the sensor relative to the standard part axis. The distance difference threshold and scale threshold methods are used to eliminate outliers to reduce gross errors. After approximation processing, the top circle data is obtained to fit the center of the cross-sectional circle. The base axis is fitted by the particle group algorithm and then we get the final coaxiality error by processing the data in the minimum containment area. We obtain accurate coaxiality error after efficient processing.
(3) In the single-section measurement test, a normal section contour center measurement test and a round runout error measurement tests are performed for different parts of the part to be tested. We then get the range value within 0.01 mm. In the multi-section coaxiality measurement test, the distance measurement is performed between the spline part and the bevel gear part for the compound gear shaft. The coaxiality error of the bevel gear part with respect to the reference line of the spline part is from 0.45 mm to 0.50 mm. Among them, the range value is 0.065 mm. Finally, the error analysis of the measurement system is performed according to the test results.
Contributions Statement
Mr. YE Zhibin gave the design idea, set up the model and analyzed the test results. Prof. LU Yonghua verified the reliability of the model. Mr. TAN Jie contributed to realizing the processing of hardware model and Mr. LI Yanlong contributed to writing software. Mr. CHAI Zhong assisted to complete the testing. All authors commented on the manuscript draft and approved the submission.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.51975293) and Aeronautical Science Foundation of China (No.2019ZD052010).
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare no competing interests.
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