The squareness measurement of driving axes of a machine tool is very important to evaluate the performance of the machine. Laser interferometer measurement system is one of the most reliable equipment to measure the squareness. However, squareness measurement using laser system with an optical square result in restriction of straightness optics setup and Abbe’s offset. This offset combines with angular errors during the motion of an axis to cause Abbe’s error. In addition, the difficulty in optical square setup causes restriction of other optics and limitation of measurable range. In this paper, mathematical approaches are presented to eliminate the Abbe’s error and to estimate squareness for full range by using the best fit of straightness data measured without an optical square. Experiments for squareness measurement of 3 axis machine tool were conducted and the proposed techniques were used for squareness evaluation with elimination of Abbe’s error and squareness estimation for the full travel range.
