I'm on the lookout for a total station in the $1K price range. I am not a surveyor, just an amateur with an interest in surveying techniques. I've been learning the essentials with a Wild T16, tape measure and stadia measurements, and recently digressed aggressively into GPS based techniques as well. I realized that I sort of skipped a step, and now I'm back-tracking my explorations to include total stations.
I am a bit nebulous on my needs, my ultimate goal is best bang for buck. Ultimately, I'm just messing about on my own half-acre lot.
I've been looking at options on eBay, and it looks like in my price range, these are the most common options:
Sokkia
SET-3A, SET-6E SET-XL
Nikon
DTM-750, GF-20C, DTM-B20C
Topcon
GTS-2, GTS-3, GTS-303
I'm aware that I could get a new piece of South equipment probably close to my price range, but I'm not interested in going that route.
What would y'all reccommend?
Any electronic total station you find in that price range is probably not going to be serviceable because of discontinued parts.?ÿ
FLYIN_Solo.....
Your boat has arrived!!!!!
Whatever you get, make sure it has a battery charger and even an extra battery or two.
I'm a Nikon fan.?ÿ I now use a DTM-520, sixteen years old and going strong. A fully charged battery lasts all day and then some, but I doubt that's a feature you need at this time.
@chris-bouffard I'm not too worried about this. I'll of course be mostly helpless if something in the critical optical or mechanical path breaks, but from my experience, those kinds of parts tend to only break from abuse. If the failure is electronic in nature, which are the kinds ofailiures more likely to be of a spontaneous nature, I'm well equipped to tackle those kinds of problems.
@dave-lindell Good point on the batteries. I'm not afraid to jury-rig a replacement, but it's certainly more convenient to have the genuine stuff.
I picked up a newer Nikon NT-2D theodolite locally for a hundred bucks, and I'm impressed with the quality and design of it, so Nikon was at the top of my list already, so I appreciate the contribution to my confirmation bias! hah.
I have a Zeiss Elta S20 robot that I will sell you for 2K. It has 3 batteries and hp48 /smi data collector. The batteries will likely need recelled. I have not used it in nearly 7 years.?ÿ
IMHO, a data collector is a must, even just to get the angles and distances etc into electronic format. Hand-writing them sucks.
I'm on the lookout for a total station in the $1K price range. I am not a surveyor, just an amateur with an interest in surveying techniques. I've been learning the essentials with a Wild T16, tape measure and stadia measurements, and recently digressed aggressively into GPS based techniques as well. I realized that I sort of skipped a step, and now I'm back-tracking my explorations to include total stations.
I am a bit nebulous on my needs, my ultimate goal is best bang for buck. Ultimately, I'm just messing about on my own half-acre lot.
I've been looking at options on eBay, and it looks like in my price range, these are the most common options:
Sokkia
SET-3A, SET-6E SET-XL
Nikon
DTM-750, GF-20C, DTM-B20C
Topcon
GTS-2, GTS-3, GTS-303
I'm aware that I could get a new piece of South equipment probably close to my price range, but I'm not interested in going that route.
What would y'all reccommend?
I just recently sold an old Leica TCR803 conventional instrument for my bosses company, it was a leftover spare we didn't need anymore. It still worked and would need a calibration for high precision work for but it was good enough for what this guy wanted. I think it was $800 Canadian and I drove a couple hours to meet him.?ÿ
I spent a couple years as an instrument man running the same instrument. They seem to last forever.?ÿ
I'm now using a 2010 Leica tps1200+ robot and the newer battery from 2018 lasts more than a day. The 2 spares from 2010 last more than half a day. Mind blown. I guess you never know with batteries.?ÿ
@richard-imrie I have a Trimble TSC1 with the Survey Controller software installed that I use with my GPS gear, It can talk to most common brands of total station.
This one is still available. ?????ÿ
Make an offer, we hate to just throw it away.......
Keelan -
The instrument Hi-staker is offering will work with your Trimble TSC1/Survey Controller if you follow the instructions in this document that I prepared almost 19 years ago.
GB
?ÿ
An update: I guess I spent too long staring at an eBay listing for a Nikon DTM-850, because the eBay algorithm autogenerated an offer for $100 off of the $700 asking price. I countered for another $100 off, and the seller accepted, so I ended up with a DTM-850 for $500. Even better, like me, it's in Canada, so that's $500 Canadian ($400 USD). And for the cherry on top, the seller is in a city only 4 hours to the west of me, and apparently a cracker jack when it comes to shipping, because I had the total station in hand by 5PM today.
The battery that it came with it won't hold a charge, so I opened it up, cut out the cells, and hooked the wires to a small DC-DC converter I have connected to a Milwaukee M18 battery adapter set for 7.4 volts out. It's hideous, but until I can re-cell the battery or get the right Hirose connector to power the thing from the data/power connector, it lets me test it out. The internal lithium battery backup is also dead, so I'll need to figure out how to replace that too.
Fiddling around with it in my house with a peanut prism, everything seems to work as expected. It comes with a fairly elaborate on-board software suite, including full data collection capabilities. I'd still like to hook it up to the TSC1, so @glenn-borkenhagen your documentation might still be helpful if similar instructions apply to the DTM-850.?ÿ