A Probabilistic View of Problems in Form Error Estimation

Form error estimation techniques based on discrete point measurements can lead to significant errors in form tolerance evaluation. By modeling surface profiles as random variables, we show how sample size and fitting techniques affect form error estimation. Depending on the surface characteristics, typical sampling techniques can result in estimation errors of as much as 50 percent. Another issue raised in the fitting approach is the metric p selection for the fitting objective. We show that for p = 2 and p = ∞, the selection does not appear to significantly affect the estimation of form errors.