Enlargement of measuring zone in laser gauges without sacrificing measurement accuracy

•Using Powell lens in laser gauges hardware improves quality of the optical system.•Optimization algorithm allows to decrease the constant error component of gauges.•Automatic calibration allows to enlargement of measuring zone in laser gauges. The paper proposes methods of enlarging the measuring zone in laser diameter gauges without sacrificing the measurement accuracy. Possessing a large measuring zone, such gauges are designed to measure external diameters of round wire materials whose diameter exceeds the laser diode wavelength (∼0.5 mm and longer). A method of the video quality improvement is proposed herein, and algorithms are developed to detect the optimal geometrical parameters and estimate observational errors within the measuring zone of the laser diameter gauge.