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temperature effects on equipment
I just got off the phone with our equipment dealer. We have a Sokkia CX103 in for a calibration because of noticeable vertical errors.
I performed a field calibration on this instrument a few months ago when it went haywire. It was about 60° out and I ended up getting about 2 minutes of vertical arc error. The gun seemed to be working correctly and regular checks proved so.
We haven’t calibrated lately and the error showed back up. I’m sure the cold had much to do with it. Still, it never sat well with me that the gun was compensating for over 2 minutes of vertical error.I was told today, at 68°F, said gun has 20″ vertical error. I was told this is normal and many other total stations are that way or worse.
What is your knowledge/experience in this matter?
I’ve run the collimation routine on several Trimble robots over the years and I always get results around 0″ to 10″ both vertically and horizontally.
I was also told this gun has about 1/2″ arc error change for every degree of temperature change. For this, we should calibrate at least every 30°F in temp change. I agree that we need to run the calibration routine more often.
Also, the compensator itself takes about 20 seconds to settle down at cold temps of around 0°F. Wow, that seems like an awful long time. I was told if we did not wait for it to settle down, we easily could be taking shots with 2 minutes of vertical error in them.
So, are all total stations this sensitive?
Good thing we keep our equipment in the trucks. Spec shows an acclimation time of 1 minute for every degree in temperature change for the instrument before accurate work can proceed.
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