Evaluating minimum zone flatness error using new method—Bundle of plains through one point

Abstract An attempt was made to create a new software solution for evaluating minimum zone (MZ) based flatness error using data acquired from a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). The authors tried to exploit one very useful characteristic of a reference plane for evaluating flatness error. Namely, it is shown that only one point located within a “cloud” of points can be used to generate reference planes for the purpose of evaluating flatness error. The method is named One Point Plane Bundle Method (OPPBM). A solution was created using exclusively basic analytic geometry relations/transformations and a general purpose worksheet tool. The results show that this solution can be used to determine very usable MZ flatness error values, which are significantly lower than values provided by the least square method. Execution times are also reasonable and acceptable. The method has been validated using the data from reference literature and experimental data measured by a CMM.