Leica MS 50 or MS 60

I have?ÿtwo 60's in service at the moment.?ÿ They're noticeably heavier than the TS15 and 1203 that I also have in the field but?ÿwe don't have to run long traverses through the woods so it's not really an issue.?ÿ The laser scanning function is?ÿuseful in certain situations.?ÿ We use that a?ÿlot for pond volume topo's.?ÿ The speed of the tracking is incredible.?ÿ I don't have anything bad to say other than the price tag.?ÿ It's a separate?ÿCaptivate CCP that you have to keep even with your?ÿDC but that's the same with the TS16.?ÿ My advise would be to go with the TS16i unless you have a specific already targeted and defined market sector to serve with the?ÿtraining wheel?ÿHDS or you want?ÿto proof of concept HDS in your workflow without making the investment of a full on scanner.?ÿ I'm curious about other people's?ÿopinions.?ÿ?ÿ?ÿ

Very slow on the scanning side but good quality on the TS side.?ÿ If you do very minor scanning and not heavily detailed then they can be a good entry step into that world.?ÿ The speed will limit any productive scans compared to scanners that will come up with millions of dots compared to thousands in the MS line.

As Cameron stated the MS60's are very good instruments. Any higher precision work we do is always done with the MS60. We also have two TS-16's.

They are not as quick and do not seem to be quite as accurate as the MS60 but are very good overall. Also as Cameron said the MS60 is?ÿ heavy and on the expensive side. The one we have has served us well but we do very little scanning with it due to is being so slow. I do want to start incorporating images into our surveys as well which both the MS60 and the TS-16s are capable of. Now we just have to start doing this!

I will say that we were always a Topcon shop but given the choice the guys will grab any of the Leica instruments over even a pretty new Topcon Robot.

I've had an MS50 for about 4 years and love it. As already mentioned, as a TS it is very fast and accurate. I would not recommend it for pure scanning jobs since it is painfully slow compared to my C10. The scanning function is great for little details like bolt patterns or rougher tasks like bridge clearances. I had a project last year where the engineer asked for the location and diameter of every tree surround a 50 acre clear cut (don't ask). I set the MS50 up and let it scan for a couple of hours while I continued to use RTK to topo the clear cut. Worked way better than trying to get to the hundreds of trees. One thing the MS50 offers as a scanner is distance. Until the P50 came out it was Leica's longest range scanner. If you can live with a 1hz scan rate you can go out over 500m.
As for cost, I was not that much more than current TS with imaging if you included the long range reflectorless EDM. Given my work model the couple of K extra was worth it.

We have an MS60 and TS16.?ÿ The scanning on the MS60 has proved useful numerous times as has the imaging when used with Infinity.?ÿ Th biggest plus for the MS60 is speed and target lock, especially 'wait and lock', this saves so much time when on a busy site.?ÿ

We have numerous monitoring jobs where the MS60 records multiple monitoring prisms on eight rounds of each face on each target.?ÿ It will be finished before the TS16 is quarter way through and it is much quieter in operation than the TS16.

Watch how quick it changes face, I challenge any surveyor not to get excited by that.?ÿ Also the on axis camera is very useful.?ÿ We quite often have photographs taken with each point when we are surveying steelwork or elevations.?ÿ No parallax issues on the image and the cross hairs are on the photos showing exactly what we recorded as the point.

The programable button on the side is great when doing elevation surveys.?ÿ No need to have the CS20, just work with the MS60 on its own, sight the point, press the button on the side and move to the next point.?ÿ No need to keep referring to the screen.?ÿ The on axis camera also lets you sight a point with just the screen, so when at a steep angle you can step away from he eye piece and use tap and turn.

The MS60 cost us 30% more than the TS16 but does give us that extra over ability on site with just one piece of kit.