Choosing an Alignment Method

Most alignment methods use a special target that you must fabricate, either a bar with one or more holes, a polygon bar, or a target containing two or more truncated pyramids.

Use the following flowchart to help you decide which alignment method (alignment type and alignment target) to use, and then consult the appropriate sections for the target specifications and procedures relating to the chosen alignment type.

Before you begin, you should be familiar with the basics of coordinate systems and be able to understand concepts such as X / Y / Z offsets and X / Y / Z angles. To understand the transformations resulting from alignment that are then applied to scan data while a sensor is scanning objects in production, see Coordinate Systems.

Performing alignment using the Surface Align Ring or Surface Align Wide tools (which results in 6 degrees of freedom) involves considerable setup effort. First, the calibration targets are more difficult to manufacture than a calibration bar. Second, the alignment tools have several parameters that must be properly configured to successfully perform an alignment.

Disks are typically only used in demo systems.

Whether or not a given rotation or offset should be considered "significant" depends on factors such as your required tolerances. For more information, see Planning Alignment.

For alignment methods involving Surface Align Ring or Surface Align Wide, see Aligning Sensors to 6 Degrees of Freedom.

For all other alignment methods, see the appropriate subsection in Aligning Sensors with up to 5 Degrees of Freedom.