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I fixed some of my Trimble s5 robot complaints…
350RocketMike replied 4 months, 4 weeks ago 12 Members · 119 Replies
Just to clarify, we weren’t laying out the anchor bolts, just the gridlines. Another company was laying out the anchor bolts and they were using a mini prism on a small pole. We were just asked to tie them in to check for any big blunder.
Also the 2 vs 5 “averaged observations” as I said I experimented with it and realized it had no effect on the measurement speed. Then someone informed me that it is just for shooting in “averaged observations” mode.
So we have been through everything, there is apparently no way to measure any faster than about 7 seconds with the mt1000 in semi active mode… at least not with the 2 s5’s and one s7 we have, and to reiterate, this is with 3 different data collectors (one was a tsc5), all different versions of access.
Everyone is so different when it comes to surveying. So many guys say we shouldn’t use the mt1000 for anything other than rough topo and others say I’m crazy for using semi active mode. I’m using it less than I was based on your guys input but lately I’ve spent a lot of time waiting for it … laying out gridlines within 0.007m or so…and shooting sets of bolts for the structure, I’ve probably spent 60+ minutes of “measuring” in semi active so far on this job.
For sure. It’s frustrating to see how many folks get locked on a “you cannot EVER do this” or “<i style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; color: var(–bb-body-text-color);”>you must ALWAYS do this“ mentality. I don’t think many people actually read the datasheets or the best practices manuals, or go to the webinars or do formal training. It’s often a lot of word-of-mouth stuff that may or may not have any facts behind it.
In my opinion it’s all about testing out the various methods to see what works and what doesn’t – there’s no such thing as the perfect solution, and different applications demand different tools or workflows.
Dealers want to sell you stuff, so they often gloss over the technical details and leave that for the customer to figure out.
Surveyors tend to want to operate the exact same way every time, rather than adapting to the gear they have and the project goals to come up with best practices for the task at hand.
Combine the two attitudes and you get a lot of misinformation floating around about what is “good” versus “bad”.
It’s worthwhile to note that the MT1000 has a spec of 5″ angular accuracy, which translates to about 2.5mm for a 100m-distance observation. That’s about on par with the Leica GRZ prisms, if I remember correctly (at least if you’re using the arrow on top to point at the instrument).
I would personally switch to a shortened mini/peanut prism, or run in semi-active mode on a short rod, for laying out gridlines. For staking I often make use of the “turn to” function coupled with the video feed, rather than trying to get it to follow me all over the place. Tell it to turn to the point, watch where it goes, move there, get locked, and dial in the stake point. I rely on the tracking a lot more for topography/mapping.
The AT360 is better than the MT1000 for vertical but does rely upon DR for the actual measurement, so it is not well suited to topography unless it’s a very open site.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil PostmanI was taught “survey to the degree of accuracy required”. Also lots of opportunities to experiment as you work and learn what difference things make. I’ve had pretty good luck with the results from the mt1000, it’s just the speed when I want to measure that annoys the hell out of me. Also I wish I had the s7 with the video feed, as I was used to a Sokkia robot with the rc5 (search finds the prism on the rc5 everytime as long as it’s pointed the right way), then upgraded to the old Leica tcrp1203+ and powersearch was amazing. You tell it the shorter way to turn and it has a fan beam so it will see the prism if you’re within like 30 degrees vertical and still lock on, no joystick required. The s5 I had to get used to always using the guidelights and it has to be almost spot on vertical to find the prism initially. GPS search can work good only on certain jobs where you’re always pretty far from the robot and only after you’ve walked a good arc around it first.
I feel like I would be much happier with this machine if I had never used the Leica robot, because it is still much better than the Sokkia ix was overall, because the tracking was so terrible on that one.
I mainly do construction layout in subdivisions and occasional rural jobs…but I still keep 3 tripods in the truck. 2 extra tribrachs in case all of a sudden I need to do something that I want the extra accuracy.
Gotcha. Why are s5’s are not taking but a few seconds to shoot in semi active mode vs your 7” time frame I don’t know. We tested again today and never saw it take that long in std edm and semi active. We timed it and stop watch on iPhone was always less than 4”. I had to check another crews points and bump them today as he was not paying attention and stored them outside the tolerances. And used only std edm semi active. So it was about 10 different points bumping and re shooting. We didn’t see much difference in the time. I think you got a bad batch of something.
Funny you talked about the short rod. Set 3 points today a couple yesterday with one. I could only see down low so yanked it out the bag. Crew chief said i didn’t know you put that in there. I said man i am to old to keep walking back to the truck. I load everything up so i have it. Of course as i am laying on the ground looking through bushes getting locked. The boss drives by and honks lol.
I see the same problem as Mike, but with an S6 and MT1000 in Std mode.
I’m wondering if it is something to do with the controller connection to the instrument.
I am using radio.
What sort of connection do you have?
It may not be an issue for cable or bluetooth
Wow. That seems strange. I am using radio as well. So mine are few seconds yall. Are seeing 7”. Sounds now like a manufacturer issue. In building these things. Something has to be going on for that much did fences. I can understand outliers. Do they build them all in same plant or different ones.
LOL, part of the reason we don’t frequently use the short poles is that usually we can’t see down that low due to all the obstacles littering the sites we work at. Since it is often solo work, I am unfortunately walking back to the truck to get a different pole, however peanut and plumb bob can go right in my vest if I might need it.
Hope the boss didn’t think you were napping. LOL.
Do you know what version of Access you have? I wonder if its something that has crept in since 2021? I believe ours we all bought in 2022 or late 2021.
I assume they are built in Sweden and that’s where the certificate came from, but I couldn’t find a label on the gun itself saying where it was built. I know my old Leica is made in Switzerland and the newer conventional (TS07’s) in the office are built in Mexico, wouldn’t be out of line to assume they might have changed manufacturing plants for some of these.
I will try bluetooth one of these days, I have only used it that way once when another crew borrowed my radio….but we did layout manually with the passive prism that day, so I wouldn’t have seen the issue. I assume most guys are using radio all the time though.
We have 2021.10. On one and 2023.10 on the other TSC7. Yeah I don’t think he is worried if i was laying down. We made some decent progress under the conditions we were working in. Keeping a short pole around helped for sure for a few points. Better than having to measure rounds to get a new control point for one set up to set one point. Lol. I don’t know the range of the Bluetooth. I think Bluetooth for Trimble is for just running it like a total station. I could be wrong. Never used it. Even if i were at the gun with dc i still left it in radio mode for whatever i was doing. I might have to try it myself. But not this week. I am beat. I am not use to toting a stake bag full of rebar and hammers caps stakes. This ild man is sore and tired. And i have another project 10 hrs north that i am headed straight for when done with this one. Plenty of work but no workers.
Just a tip on the short rod. I used to mount one of the old brick prisms between the bottom of the rod and the point so I could stand up and take the shot if I needed to get more accurate staking out anchor bolts, etc. Just put hand over top prism and get locked onto the bottom one, use the rod bubble for plumb. Can leave it on the rod, turn it backwards when not needed.
Lol I did that years ago. Before the robot days. So i man had to be on his game
It sure isn’t an easy job sometimes for sure. That’s why. I like to keep as many tools available as possible, including a Leica for reflectorless shots.
So I guess it’s not the software versions causing the 7-10 second measurements, it must have been a change in the hardware itself. I’m guessing they were forced to source different parts (like I pointed out, many of the firmware updates were for updated parts). Guess I’ll have to wait a couple years to see other people start complaining….none of our guys ever had Trimble total stations before, so they just assumed that was the normal operation.
How do you mount it to the bottom of the rod? I don’t know what a brick prism is so hard for me to invision it. Also what would be the height difference? I’ve stuck my peanut prism in front of the active prism (after switching prism modes in access) but i can’t imagine it locking to the prism at the bottom of my pole…since it’s so fussy about vertical angle to get a lock even with the multi track prism. Often I use “turn to” and put it to 90 degrees (if I’m on flat ground) to get a lock. Just because I can see the guidelights flashing green and yellow doesn’t mean it’s close enough to lock onto the prism.
A lot of old prism had a spot for a candy cane to set on top of them for sighting horizontally. So not all fancy like today’s prisms. There were rectangular ones square round all sorts same 5/8 all thread so you could stack prisms on top of prisms. The old edm’s only not total station built in like today’s. You simply set up and shot a distance. For miles. A lot of the first edms were bigger than today’s total stations and were not used for short distances. Red ranger was one of the smaller ones. I know were 15 of those are today. Hardly ever used. Look like new. Later they had some that mounted above the transit or theodolites and eventually made them internal which became the birth of the total station . Mush like we have today. So when measuring rounds or sets of angles in direct and reverse. For a traverse. I would remove the top mount edm from my Wild T1000 digital transit. Turn all the angles direct and reverse. Then mount the edm and shoot the distance forward and backwards. Now the darn things do it all for u as you sit patiently waiting. Lol.
It must be remembered that OUAT, not so very long ago, it was frequently necessary to measure very long distances with the EDM. The sort of distances that would typically be measured via GPS today. And it was necessary for the total station operator to actually see the target through the scope at those distances. Hence, prisms needed to be big and to have big bright colored targets associated with them.
I can’t remember he last time I aimed at a target by looking through the scope. The very idea must seem quant to a surveyor under the age of 40.
So true. After the first afternoon on this project. Which was mostly drive time and getting supplies finding control etc. I found a good long flat area with a tower near by to run through all the collimation adjustments etc. the other crew had never done that before. Never. The crew chief gave me the deer and headlights look as i said make sure when doing your sighting to get all parralax out. Then i had to explain. Not his fault its the lack of training. Here the dc. Push this and that do this bam you are now a Party Chief in charge. What amazes me is. I hear all the negative talk about the younger folks not wanting to work no retention etc. They don’t know what to do we have to do it this way and only this way to monitor blunders etc. what i see is a generation that wants to learn. And i hate to say it but I spent 20 minutes on the tailgate with a scratch pad and had him computing inverses long hand and right triangles and he didn’t just perform that he quickly understood and was able to now see what the data collector was doing. He wants to learn. Yes he is very techy and loves that stuff. But he picked my brain the rest of the week on how is this done how does the data collector know what to turn to for stake out. And he was a hard worker. Made me wear myself out because of my old pride and i was not going to let some young buck drive more rebars than me. Lol. My crew chief knew i was hurting . Every morning he said let me set everything up just relax. But i said nope get field book set up job set up i will get signs out back site etc But i will moan and cry all weekend trying to heal up. I foresee an epsom salt bath coming soon lol.
What all do you stake in subdivisions. Man if i would have had a robot to do subdivisions layout back years ago i would have been tickled pink. We set pc pt and ran cl of roads out traversing along the routes curves etc. steel tape a lot of stuff. No data collector for a while. Oppiste over adjacent. Angles left and right set the offsets at pc pt for back of curb set up site line. I man keeping everything online as we steel taped evey 50 ft except in curves and vertical curves. Right angle prism and plumb bob was on your side always. Even when the dc was really shining we would often set the pc pt radially and then just set gun up site and tape in. But robots eliminated the 3 man crew. I would say labor cost was deciding factor. Because a well oiled 3 man crew I guarantee could walk the dog and drag the pup on a two man robot crew. In many instances. I see a lot of one man crews doing layout. My crew chief was one of them all by himself staking. If i had to do that every day by myself i don’t think i would last long today. I would want atleast a bucket toter . I love a robot but i don’t think they are faster than a 3 man crew on a topo. A good i man could keep two rods hopping and cover a lot of ground but labor cost is a thing for sure.
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