The invention provides a small absolute photoelectric
encoder, and belongs to the technical field of sensors. Comprising a shaft, an upper cover, a
light source plate, a
grating code disc, a slit code disc, a circuit board and a lower cover. The lower cover and the upper cover are fixedly connected to form a main body structure; the
light source plate, the
grating code disc, the slit code disc and the circuit board are sequentially arranged in an inner cavity formed by the upper cover and the lower cover from top to bottom; the shaft is supported in the center of the upper cover through a bearing, one end of the shaft extends out of the upper cover, the
light source plate and the
grating coded disc are sleeved on the shaft arranged in the upper cover, a center hole of the light source plate is sleeved with the shaft in a clearance mode, the light source plate is fixedly connected with the inner wall of the upper cover, the grating coded disc is fixedly connected with the shaft, and the slit coded disc and the circuit board are coaxially fixed in the lower cover. According to the invention, a unique slit code disc design is utilized to realize an angle measurement mode combining
Gray code and chord tangent angle detection, and on the premise that the precision is not changed, the size of the
Gray code disc is greatly reduced, so that the overall size of the
encoder is reduced, and the application requirements of small instrument equipment are met.