title: Development of a steel ball center alignment device based on Michelson interference concept.
abstract: This study presents a ball center alignment method based on the Michelson interferometer where one of the reflecting mirrors is replaced by a lens and steel ball. By locating the ball away from the focal length of the lens, the beam is reflected as a spherical wave. The interference ring formed by the planar and spherical waves can be clearly observed using a camera without a lens. The distance of the offset of the ball center can be enhanced by more than 140% using this method. A fast ring profile fitting method can reduce circle fitting time to around a third of that needed for Hough transformation.
authors.affiliation: Center for Measurement Standards, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Hau-Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Chien-Hung
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Liu