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.
Welcome. You are in am interesting field that is poorly represented on this site's membership. You may get some questions.
It’s pretty caveman-esque but we aren’t generally concerned with absolute position and only relative, i also don’t deal with sunlight or big temperature swings in the shops i am in.
Here is todays setup
Welcome. I have used the laser trackers and smr myself. Once set up they can do almost anything like what you are doing for sure. You can set up more than one and have them all streaming at the same time to an smr and such.
I knew a surveyor, once, that set wing patterns for Boeing. Used high precision gear and the engineers still wanted it to be tighter...
Welcome to the group; hope to learn more about
optical metrology
Thanks for joining!
@olemanriver o yea, they are pretty wild, one of the more fun projects i did was working for a robotics manufacturer, they had a joint project with allen bradley or johnson controls to use their robot with one of the others controls, we had involved api to use their 6 dof smr to do position and orientation capture during movements, this project was in my part of the building and being a toolmaker they had me making some parts to mount the duplex smr in various parts, essentially a smr that follows the base station with regards to orientation, the base station can figure out the distance while the smr determines orientation.
my company is funny, we will use a laser interferometer to validate a machine, but only after all adjustments have been made the old way, big ass squares that need a crane to be put on a table and precision spirit levels (.010mm per 1000mm), it just takes a very long time. Its a tough sell to try and get them to invest in using smr for rough adjustment because its actually not accurate enough for final geometry corrections although its way faster than chasing a bubble back and forth for a few days and they are not incentivized to spend the money because its the customer paying for the time anyway.
Welcome.
Which branch of engineering do you intend to pursue and at which university?
@holy-cow robotics and mechatronics w/ ee @ detroit mercy. i have an a&p license already, talk about the taking the long way around lol.
@seve7 yeah i don’t miss doing alignments and such. When you have to calibrate a torque wrench and can see when one is getting out of adjustment as you run a smr over something and say torque to this and it goes to far are not far enough you are most definitely scratching your head lol. I did like the laser trackers and spatial analyzer software as it made life much easier for sure. They are sensitive to temperature and pressure changes for sure. I was aligning a piece of equipment outside once. The sun played havoc on me. Align in early morning. Wait till sun was high check it again and again at end of day. It was better at night but it had to be certified for the time of day it was going to be utilized.
Welcome! From Florida
@olemanriver funny you mention that, i just became suspect of one of my torque wrenches today, didnt use it, but the head was floppy, like the spring got damaged somehow. Not a big deal as I've been planning on moving to electronic ones, as much as I have the feel of using them like you cant feel the breakover start to happen, I probably dont have to worry as much about them and their calibration.