A novel method for measuring transit tilt error in laser trackers

A novel method was proposed to measure the tilt error between the transit axis and standing axis of the laser tracker. A gradienter was first used to make the standing axis of the laser tracker perpendicular to the horizontal plane. The laser beam of the tracker was then projected onto a vertical plane set at a certain distance from the tracker with equal horizontal angles and diverse vertical angles in two-face mode. The contrail of the laser beam was recorded while the simulation was manipulated to estimate the beam trail under the same circumstance. The tilt error was thus obtained according to the comparison of the actual result against the simulated one. Experimental results showed that the accuracy of the tilt measuring method could meet the user’s demand.