Patent ID: 7907267

Claim:
An optical method of generating calibration data for use in calibrating a part inspection system, the method comprising: supporting a calibration device having a central axis, a width, a height along the central axis and at least one region which is rotationally symmetric about the axis and wherein a profile of the at least one region contains information for calibrating the system; scanning the at least one region of the supported device with at least one plane of radiation wherein the at least one plane has a width greater than the width of the device so that the device occludes the at least one plane of radiation to create corresponding unobstructed left and right planar portions of the at least one plane of radiation passing by and not blocked by the supported device wherein each of the unobstructed left and right planar portions contains an amount of radiation which is representative of a respective geometric dimension of the device; measuring the amount of radiation present in each of the unobstructed left and right planar portions to obtain measurement signals; processing the measurement signals to obtain calibration data for calibrating the system without the need to measure radiation blocked or reflected by the supported device, the calibration data being capable of converting raw data to calibrated data; and storing the calibration data.