This article describes and evaluates the focus variation method, an optical 3D measurement technique. The goal is to analyse the performance of the method on a series of typical measurement tasks including roughness measurements, form and wear measurements. First, a comparison of roughness measurements between the proposed method and a tactile device on a newly developed roughness standard is made. Results show that both systems deliver R a values that are comparable to each other with differences of a few nanometers. Afterwards form measurements are performed on a calibration standard with hemi-spherical calottes, showing a repeatability of sphere measurements < 100 nm. Finally, two typical engineering applications are provided. The first is wear measurement of cutting tools, the second the inspection and classification of welding spots. Both applications demonstrate the ability of the method to measure steep surface flanks up to 80° and surfaces with difficult reflectance behaviour.

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