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TS16 vs TS13 vs S5 vs Geomax/Carlson zoom 90
jitterboogie replied 2 years, 10 months ago 14 Members · 43 Replies
What software do you use with the leica’s?
I bought my own gear so cost was a factor and also I’m the only user.
For your boss having multiple brands will be more of a headache than any savings on one piece of gear. Also third party software always adds another layer of hassle. Unless your a company with only one or two crews it is far, far better to stick to Trimble/Leica and use their software.
Given you mostly have Trimble GNSS I’d be getting one of their robots if I was doing the buying in your firm provided your dealer is good at supporting gear. Being able to plug the same controller into both GNSS or robot is very useful. Even though I’d personally prefer a Lecia robot that would be less important to me in your situation than sticking to one brand for the company.
Fine if that’s all you do but most small companies I know don’t do 100% boundary so instrument needs to do setout, monitoring, control for topo etc. where need to minimise error up front so they don’t propagate.
Agree with your other comment below that once your chasing <5mm that it’s the pole/prism/tribrach/methods…… that is going to hamstring you first. That and you need a particular type of surveyor who is happy to work that carefully.
Actually getting down on my knees to perfectly center the pole on the nail is among some of the things I do that I don’t feel like a lot of guys I’ve worked with do. I think I’m also a lot more ocd about centering.
The only 1″ instrument we have is the sx12 we just got. I do feel like it would be nice to have a 1″ instrument myself but I’m not the one buying it. For what I do 99% of the time 3″ would be perfectly fine but like you said it’s the other 1% that you may wish you had the better instrument.
5″ at 500 feet is 0.01’…the size of the job or the contract or the company doesn’t change that. Most instruments do not have the optical resolution to aim better than 0.01′ at 1000 feet. I submit that you cannot aim well enough at 1000′ to make a 1″ instrument worthwhile.
Oh, and the 1″ is only really guaranteed by Leica (for instance) if you have had it maintained (and have a certificate). Some of those certifications require shipping the instrument to a certain facility. So, we have a race car Ferrari, we ship it off to get specially certified and calibrated and then the shipper does what to it on the way back?
A 5″ gun (which if you turn forward and reverse should do better than 5″) is the least of your worries for any real world monitoring or whatever you might be doing.
I like a good 1″ total station as much as the next guy, but I also know it is rarely worth the extra money unless I need to it fulfill a certain specification written into a contract.
If you are doing long distance, high precision measurements, it could be useful. (This assumes that you also purchased and correctly used all the relevant accessories like tribrachs, tripods, prisms, adapters, etc etc etc, and followed all the correct procedures, etc.) But, at some point we end up moving outside the best use of a total station marketed to land surveyors.
I have balanced and reviewed many traverses done with 1″ and 5″ total stations, and I can sincerely tell you that the instrument being 1 or 5 seconds is the last thing I worry about.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.- Posted by: @350rocketmike
My current and last gun were both 3″ but the Leica would shoot 2 faces like 5″ horizontal difference and 10″ vertical while the Sokkia freshly back from repair and calibration was 10″ and 15″.
Is that using robotics? Is it a pointing error?
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. That’s using it robotically. The Leica consistently shoots much tighter angles between the 2 faces and still is after a couple months of using it heavily.
I also just got to try out the ts16 today. I only used it with my existing tablet and Fieldgenius because I wanted to see how well it would work that way, as that’s the only way the boss will go with them. It worked very well in my minimal testing.
I still see value in getting a 2″/3″ for regular work given the relatively small price premium, wouldn’t get the 1″ unless doing precision construction or monitoring all the time. I want to know that practically no errors are coming from instrument so I still have sufficient error budget to account for systematic errors I can’t adjust out of the other gear in equation and still get in the 3-5mm ballpark.
Turning both faces is fine for traverse/monitoring but not so practical for setout. You’ve convinced yourself 5″ is what meets your needs and that is fine too.
My experience is that Leica or any of them need to regularly have the robotic aiming calibrated. This should be done by field crews often. It would be my first question if I saw splits of 10 and 15 seconds coming back from a 3 second gun…and I would question the tribrachs, legs, etc.
Even using the same tribrachs isnt an answer, with robots, they can be very sensitive to using the specific tribrach they were designed for. Ran into this issue with the Topcon GT. We ended up spending an additional $5,000 in tribrachs or something like that when we went team dark yellow.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.All robotic guns have provision for collimation (ie. compensation adjustment). Immediately after collimation your gun, whatever brand, should come close to splitting to specification – assuming that your tripod and tribrach are also both of of high quality and performing to their own specification. With the higher quality brands (specifically Leica, Trimble, and their derivatives) this will continue for quite some time, perhaps weeks or months. With lesser brands this may continue for the remainder of the day only.
Leica sells tribrachs at a couple of quality, and therefore price, levels. Their high quality line sells for about $500 a pop, but these will stay in adjustment just about forever. The lower quality ones are the same shade of green, but are of about equal quality to those sold in various colors by everybody else in the $200 – $300 range. These you should expect to need adjusting regularly.
Tripods also come at various quality and performance levels. The quality of the glass you are aiming at also plays a part.
Tripods and tribrachs wear out. It just makes no sense to stack brand new instruments on wobbly old tribrachs and tripods. It also make no sense to plunge into a $40k robot deal and “save” a few hundred bucks on cheap accessories. In fact, the best bang for your buck to improve the accuracy of your data is to stack you old instrument on a new tripod and tribrach.
I actually did that a few times on the Sokkia and it still had excessive splits. It was also just back from repair and calibration.
The Leica had never been out for calibration in a shop. I did the field adjustments but it didn’t seem like it actually needed them yet.
@mark-mayer
One thing to note, I was aiming at the same Sokkia 360 prism with both the Sokkia and Leica. It may be the weak link in that setup.
Tribrach is original Leica.
@mark-mayer
Leica sells tribrachs at a couple of quality, and therefore price, levels. Their high quality line sells for about $500 a pop, but these will stay in adjustment just about forever.
Never understood the thinking behind spending top dollar on the instrument and collector then cheaping out on the tribrach, carrier, & glass
4 tribrachs from the same vendor. All will “fit” your total station, whatever the brand. 3 are Leica, the fourth is a no-name brand clone. If there was no difference in performance would anyone buy the $490 model? Would you expect the same performance from a $260 Leica tribrach as from a $490 Leica tribrach?
If I were buying tribrachs to support high accuracy work control work I’m definitely going for the $490 model. But if I’m buying stuff to support ordinary construction staking the $260 model is attractive. But I recognize that I shouldn’t expect the same performance and service life out of it.
@norman-oklahoma
I do ordinary construction layout (not high precision stuff) but if a cheaper one is going out of adjustment faster I’d want the better one. I assume the top of the line Leica from 2010 came with the expensive one.
One thing I find if I go to an older subdivision with preexisting control or control that was set with GPS I’m always getting 2-3cm error. If I’m the first guy to a new subdivision and I see all the control with my TS I get less than a centimeter between everything usually. I’d rather know I’m not introducing error myself.
@norman-oklahoma
The Leica equipment will “fit” anything…but they are not suitable for many Topcon Robots. You need Topcon tribrachs, and you need the ones spec’d for those robots. They include an extra locking screw (use it). And it isn’t marketing. It absolutely makes a difference in traversing. We had all sorts of issues with horrible angular closures when we first got the GT’s. “Upgraded” (From the high end Leica’s to the Topcons) and all our issues disappeared. To be fair, the Topcon GT needs this because of the way it’s motors torque the setup. The other instrument makers have chosen to deal with this in other ways.
Those cost north of $600 apiece…and if you want optical plummets, the ones the gun comes with don’t have it.
That makes it about $2000 a truck for tribrachs…we had a few already, therefore my comment about $5,000…
For all my comments about 5 second guns being “good enough” for most anything, I would not skimp on tribrachs…I am through buying cheap ones when it is my decision. Same goes for legs. If their precision is an order of magnitude better than the instrument I am using, that is almost “good enough”. (BTW, the GT’s were 3″, if that adds to the OP’s discussion.)
The huge advantage for the Topcon tribrachs is that if you have an optical plummet in your instrument, you can check each tribrach every time you clip a gun into it, as they use a pass though system where you can use the gun’s plummet.
If I was going Leica, I would not use an optical plummet tribrach. I would choose their Traverse Kit. Comes in a great hard case to protect the system, and a carrier with a rotatable OP is MUCH better in that you can spin it and check the calibration every single setup.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong.I guess I never commented that I got to try out the ts16 the other day while the sales rep did me a solid with a firmware update on the old 1203+ so we can use an RH17 with it in the future.
The ts16 ran great on Fieldgenius on my existing tablet. Very hard to lose a lock. Only about 20 minutes of playing with it but I was impressed. I’m also impressed with the Leica customer service so far. I believe he drove out from Toronto.
I had mine updated a couple of years ago, you should like how much faster the 1203 will shut down now.
I always time it so I’m packing up the Parani’s while it shuts down. Lol. And don’t pull the cord out right after shut down or it will turn itself back on. Lol.
Any other improvements you noticed besides the shutdown speed? I didn’t actually get it yet, he had to borrow the CF card and send it in the mail, hopefully I get it back today.
Mark sums it up very well, and there is a whole heap of good comments in this thread.
My work place uses Trimble gear.
Mostly I work with S6, TSC3 and R10.
The S6 is a great instrument – a real workhorse, rugged and reliable.
It earns money.
And that’s an important point.
Day in, day out, rain and shine – its out there earning.
One day a year at the dealer for calibration is the only downtime.
There are a lot of other good things about the instrument – the MT1000 prism, the video.
And very few downsides – mostly the direct reflectorless.
That Access thinks and works like a kiwi surveyor is a plus for me
The S6, plus Access, plus the GPS heads are a really efficient way to go. Part of that efficiency is how well it integrates in the field.
NOT cheap, but they earn their cost over and over again.
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