I'm looking at purchasing a new robot and was wondering if anybody is using the PS, how they like it and what are the negatives? Even though the S6 intrigues me, my local dealer is a Topcon dealer and they've treated me well so the S6 is out.
Also, just out of curiosity, how much do new S6's cost?
Thanks.
I have the PS and like it pretty well. It is the first robot for me, so I can not compare it with others. From my experience with it:
A few pros - turning angle sets is super fast (and fun to watch). when locked on and tracking it measures very quickly. the "scanning" function seems neat, but I haven't played with it much. Reflectorless seems to hit what I am aiming at better than my past instruments.
A few cons - every once in a while (a few months) I have to take off the communication/carry handle and put it back on as a means to solve a communication issue - absolutely no corrosion because it is never in the rain. the tracking video posted seems a little optimistic, it does really good, but maybe not that good in a real world with obstacles situation.
My company bought one a few months ago. It's a great topo gun, especially if you can couple it with a Ranger with the new SurveyPro software. The quick codes are awesome for topo.
For boundary work I was a little disappointed. The closure wasn't near as good as I was expecting. (approximately 0.4' in about a mile if I remember correctly and we were turning 2 sets of angles thru our control points). I know that is well within most specs, but I thought it should have been tighter. (Yes, I did balance the traverse in case your wondering).
Also, every couple of weeks or so, we have to "re-calibrate" the digital level on it. (Not sure that's the correct way to say it). It has levelling compensators inside like most all guns nowadays, but for some reason, every couple of weeks they will drift out. (We level up the gun using the digital level bubble and get the residuals down to a few seconds. Spin the gun 90degrees or so and the residuals jump up to 30 seconds or more. I'm told the compensators will adjust for this, but it throws our vertical data off. I started to know it needed to be calibrated when we would get vertical angle error messages on our repitition shots.) It's a simple procedure to "re-calibrate" it, but it seems like we have to do it way too often in my humble opinion.
One more thing and then I'll quit beating it up. When you sight a prism and the gun starts tracking, it will drift off of what I see as the center of the prism. Usually up and right. We have compared turning angles with us sighting the prism manually compared to letting the gun find the center and the angles were almost identical, but we got mixed results when we combined the two. Maybe this is normal, but I'm uneasy about the gun sighting somewhere other than the middle of the prism.
This is my first dealings with a robot, so take it for what it's worth. Maybe the above are minor or expected issues, but I though I might mention them.