Hello From Detroit
Not a surveyor but have some interest in the techniques used as I am a Field Service Engineer for a machine tool builder that makes some of the worlds largest and heaviest CNC mills and lathes. Probably short timing on it though as I’m finally heading back school to get a proper engineering degree.
My first thought towards optical metrology was when I was working on a giant rig of some sort for a NASA rocket and while I was just a lowly tool builder at the time, there was a laser smr operator checking some parts where I was working, he posited the question, how did they do this before the laser did it(for us)? I took a guess and said they probably had something similar to a rifle scope on some super precision scales to know inclination and angle, and then triangulate the shit out of things.
Fast forward a little bit, and I land in a shop that had a decent autolevel, a wild/leica na2 with the parallel plate micrometer. I know nothing about it, and some guy tells me that I can measure vertical distance with this thing, I call bullshit because I, and not the other guy knew how the thing actually worked, ie, having a set of parallel plates that shifts the line of sight vertically, not changing slope. I find a manual and start reading. This shop also happened to have a brunson jig transit that absolutely no one knew how to use or at least would claim to know how to use it.
Still dont know shit about shit but during my workflow, one of the biggest time eaters is getting a machine rough levelled, its a Japanese company that most of my Japanese coworkers are entrenched in the method of using spirit levels to rough these things in, it works… eventually. Using an autolevel significantly speeds up the process, I actually went one farther and purchased a precision tilting level, a topcon ts-e1, that seems to be in pretty decent shape.
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