Establishment of a measuring station on a diamond turning machine for in-process cutting edge inspection of single point diamond micro-tools

This paper presents a measuring station based on an atomic force microscope (AFM), which is designed and constructed on a four-axis diamond turning machine for inspection of the cutting edge profile of single point diamond micro-tools. The measuring station is composed of an AFM probe unit for three-dimensional (3D) edge profile measurement and an alignment system with an optical sensor for aligning the probe-tip with the edge top of the tool chip. The alignment system greatly shortens the alignment time, which is essential for carrying out the edge profile measurement by the AFM. Measurement experiments of round nose micro-tools with nominal nose radii of 8 μm and less than 2 μm were carried out to demonstrate the performance of the measuring station.