The propagation of variations, such as fixture errors and datum errors resulting from assembly and machining processes, has been extensively studied. However, only a few studies that focus on form error propagation in assembly systems have been implemented. Machining errors, especially form errors, have great impact on assembly accuracy and accuracy stability of precision mechanical systems. With form errors being the research object, a method for calculating mating variation and specifying mating coordinate is proposed to improve the accuracy of the variation propagation model. Taking into account the form error of mating surfaces, the assembly variation propagation of a precision mechanical system is analyzed, and the brief derivation procedure of the variation propagation model is introduced afterwards. The variation propagation model involves a new concept of mating variation specified by the two mating surfaces. An innovative method, the difference surface search based method, is proposed to calculate the mating variation amongst the mating surfaces. The obtained mating variation is then utilized to specify the mating coordinate in the variation propagation model. Moreover, FEM is employed to simulate the contact state of the two mating surfaces to demonstrate effectiveness of the proposed method. Meanwhile, the mating variation and mating coordinate obtained are incorporated into the assembly variation propagation model, which is then verified by a following case study through a comparison between the calculated results and the experimental results. The comparing results indicate that the established model improves the prediction of assembly accuracy. The developed model enables the investigation of various fundamental issues in variation reduction, including variation analysis, process monitoring, accuracy prediction, and accuracy control.
Utilizing the convex hull theory, a novel minimum zone circle （MZC） method, named im- proved minimum zone circle （IMZC） was developed in this paper. There were three steps for IMZC to evaluate the roundness error. Firstly, with the convex hull algorithm, data points on the circle contour were categorized into two sets to determine two concentric circles which contained all points of the contour. Secondly, vertexes of the minimum circumscribed circle and the maximum inscribed circle were found out from the previously determined two sets, and then four tangent points for de- termining the two concentric circles were also found out. Lastly, according to the evaluation using the MZC method, the roundness error was figured out. In this paper l IMZC was used to evaluate roundness errors of some micro parts. The evaluation results showed that the measurement precision using the IMZC method was higher than the least squared circle （LSC） method for the same set of data points, and IMZC had the same accuracy as the traditional MZC but dramatically shortened com- putation time. The computation time of IMZC was 6. 89% of the traditional MZC.
