Profile measurement taken with liquid-crystal gratings

Profile measurement taken with liquid-crystal gratings and a phase-shifting technique is proposed, and its effectiveness is verified by experiment. The surface profile is obtained by measurement of the phase distributions of the sinusoidal gratings deformed by an object's surface. The liquid-crystal grating gives an accurate phase shift, an arbitrary projection pitch, and a constant surface brightness compared with conventional gratings such as a laser interference fringe grating and a Ronchi grating. Therefore a flexible measuring system may be developed with it. Two gratings with different pitches are used to measure an object with large steps. A two-color projection system can be used to produce such gratings simultaneously. Locally varying reflectivity on a surface can also be compensated by adjustment of the color component of the projected grating with a liquid-crystal grating. Thus the contrast in the projected grating can be made uniform, and a good profile measurement can be accomplished.