Laser differential confocal lens thickness measurement

Based on the property that the absolute zero of an axial intensity curve exactly corresponds to the focus of the objective in a differential confocal system (DCS), a new laser differential confocal lens thickness measurement is proposed to achieve the high-precision non-contact measurement of lens thickness. The proposed approach uses the absolute zero of DCS axial response curve to precisely identify the vertexes of the test lens, obtains the central optical thickness of the test lens, and then uses the radius of curvature and refractive index of the test lens and the ray tracing facet iterative calculation to obtain the central geometrical thickness of the test lens. The theoretical analyses and preliminary experiments indicate that the measurement accuracy is better than 0.03%. (paper)