Abstract. Strategic considerations and publications dealing with the future of industrial production are significantly influenced these days by the concept of “Industrie 4.0”. For this reason the field of measurement technology for industrial production must also tackle this concept when thinking about future trends and challenges in metrology. To this end, the Manufacturing Metrology Roadmap 2020 of the VDI/VDE Society for Measurement and Automatic Control (GMA) was published in 2011 (VDI/VDE-GMA, 2011; Imkamp et al., 2012). The content of this roadmap is reviewed and extended here, covering new developments in the field of the Industrie 4.0 concept and presented with expanded and updated content.

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Achieving traceability is crucial for complex measurement techniques, especially for coordinate measuring machines (CMMs). For CMMs using tactile probes, traceability can for certain measurements be achieved using model-based uncertainty budgets. Up to now, uncertainty simula-tions could be used applicable only for tactile CMM measurements of regular geometries, but are available as an add-on for different CMMs. This procedure is accepted by guidelines and inter-national standards (VDI/VDE 2617-7, supplement 1 [1] to GUM). Furthermore, empirical ap-proaches to assess the measurement uncertainty by means of calibrated workpieces or prior know-ledge exist or are under development. These approaches can as a matter of principle also be used for CMMs featuring computed tomography (CT). In this paper, the empirical assessment of the mea-surement uncertainty of the upcoming measurement technology CT [2, 3] will be discussed uniting the present approaches and the current knowledge, with the focus being on the applicability of con-cepts for users in industry. For this purpose, the influences on dimensional CT measurements are analyzed and evaluated, taking the measurement data of a current industrial micro CT system as a basis.

The integration of silicon micro probing systems into conventional gear measuring instruments (GMIs) allows fully automated measurements of external involute micro spur gears of normal modules smaller than 1 mm. This system, based on a silicon microprobe, has been developed and manufactured at the Institute for Microtechnology of the Technische Universität Braunschweig. The microprobe consists of a silicon sensor element and a stylus which is oriented perpendicularly to the sensor. The sensor is fabricated by means of silicon bulk micromachining. Its small dimensions of 6.5 mm × 6.5 mm allow compact mounting in a cartridge to facilitate the integration into a GMI. In this way, tactile measurements of 3D microstructures can be realized. To enable three-dimensional measurements with marginal forces, four Wheatstone bridges are built with diffused piezoresistors on the membrane of the sensor. On the reverse of the membrane, the stylus is glued perpendicularly to the sensor on a boss to transmit the probing forces to the sensor element during measurements. Sphere diameters smaller than 300 µm and shaft lengths of 5 mm as well as measurement forces from 10 µN enable the measurements of 3D microstructures. Such micro probing systems can be integrated into universal coordinate measuring machines and also into GMIs to extend their field of application. Practical measurements were carried out at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt by qualifying the microprobes on a calibrated reference sphere to determine their sensitivity and their physical dimensions in volume. Following that, profile and helix measurements were carried out on a gear measurement standard with a module of 1 mm. The comparison of the measurements shows good agreement between the measurement values and the calibrated values. This result is a promising basis for the realization of smaller probe diameters for the tactile measurement of micro gears with smaller modules.

Among profiles, helix and tooth thickness pitch is one of the most important parameters of an involute gear measurement evaluation. In principle, coordinate measuring machines (CMM) and CNC-controlled gear measuring machines as a variant of a CMM are suited for these kinds of gear measurements. Now the Japan National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NMIJ/AIST) and the German national metrology institute the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have each developed independently highly accurate pitch calibration methods applicable to CMM or gear measuring machines. Both calibration methods are based on the so-called closure technique which allows the separation of the systematic errors of the measurement device and the errors of the gear. For the verification of both calibration methods, NMIJ/AIST and PTB performed measurements on a specially designed pitch artifact. The comparison of the results shows that both methods can be used for highly accurate calibrations of pitch standards.

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The three-rosette method is a well-established self-calibrating error-separation method used for highly accurate pitch calibrations of cylindrical gears on coordinate measuring machines or gear measuring machines. It is based on the principle of circle closure and uses multiple measurements in different relative positions of the gear with respect to the measuring device. However, since its measurement effort is proportional to the square of the number of teeth, the method is of limited usability for gears with a large number of teeth. In this paper, a reduced method which requires much fewer measurements is described. This method is based on the same error model and is still self-calibrating. The measurement uncertainties for this method are only slightly higher than for the complete method. After an introduction to the three-rosette method, this paper describes the impact of the number and choice of the measured relative positions on the measurement uncertainty. Moreover, the problem of an erroneously determined gear axis is addressed. Finally, the effectiveness of the reduced three-rosette method is shown in intercomparison measurements with four participants. The obtained E n scores show that the reduced three-rosette method allows pitch calibrations with nearly the same accuracy as can be achieved with the complete method. The reduced three-rosette method is part of the TraCIM online service (https://tracim.ptb.de) of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) allowing software manufacturers or calibration laboratories to obtain a certificate for their algorithms of the reduced three-rosette method after a successfully performed software test. Moreover, calibration laboratories can receive accreditation by the German national accreditation body (DAkkS) for pitch calibrations performed by using the reduced three-rosette method.

The German national metrology institute, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), has developed a novel calibration method for gear artefacts. This reduces the current calibration uncertainty of gear standards, which is an essential step towards meeting the rising quality demands of the gear manufacturing industry. The measurement setup is based on a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) equipped with a high-precision rotary table. The key element of the novel gear measuring device is a tracking interferometer (TI) for reading the distance information. This information is combined with the reading of the coordinate measuring machine line scales in order to reduce the overall measurement uncertainty. If an optimized measurement strategy is applied, the measurement results are almost achieved with laser interferometer accuracy. First simulations and measurement results for an involute profile artefact are presented and discussed.