Depending on dealer when you get the instrument back they have usually zeroed out everything from a clean and cal you get a little certificate etc.. But you need to run through all the adjustments trunnion autolock even the level etc you have to turn so many direct and reverse in the routines be above or below a certain angle vertically for trunnion vertical collimation so the equipment can apply the corrections correctly. I have a ols s6 manual that talks about this somewhere and the appropriate distances targets need to be from instrument etc.. etc. Some things have slightly changed with the newer S series since then and depending on add ons s7 etc now days a few things added. So you have a systematic increase in angle going on for all instruments at same time. That is fishy. Good Luck. Hopefully it all gets resolved soon.
You comment about what should on autolock and the issue of getting something back and making it SOP to run through everything is SPOT on. Our dealer does clean and cal and makes sure it is performing to specs. All errors are zeroed out period. Its up to the surveyor to run back through all the routines to check and store the new calibration and adjust parameters before working. When I was part time I picked up a S5 from clean and cal went to job site checked the errors and they all stated zero so I called the dealer and he told me yes we re zero everything you need to run through everything. I did but I could have had a big issue on that mile long traverse if I did not do the routines etc LOL.
So may have an answer after a lot of testing and repair shop review.....It appears that the S5 instruments have a known issue that requires re-greasing the bearings. After going to the shop a bunch, finally the regional sales person got involved and noted the issue. No one else knew about it......So lesson learned.
That sounds...screwy. Ungreased bearings causing problems with turned angles...on a magnetically driven total station?
Not saying it's impossible, I'm just surprised that would be the critical issue.
Rover 83 won't say it is impossible but i will. Greased or ungreased bearings cannot change the angle that is read when the instrument is pointing at something. An angle was turned, a reading was taken, and apparently was incorrect. I'm running away from any service provider who is telling me it was wrong because of faulty greased bearings. How do these bearings influence the reading the angle encoder takes?
Its sounds like your Retro Turbo Encabulater needs to be realigned.
Good call on the greased bearings....didn't make a difference. We have sent one of the units to Michigan I believe to get looked at. Only response from that group was "This is a known S5 issue"....I will give an update when I have one, but boy is this a lot of run around for one of expensive robot.
I'm curious if there are any site specific conditions that could be causing the issue? I knew a surveyor who sorta had the same issue running traverse along a road. They too made a couple runs with different crews and equipment and nothing changed. Then there was an accident, all traffic was held up and they re-ran the traverse and ended up with a good loop.
The whole bearing grease thing seems off to be nice about it. No one ever clued us into greased bearing issues on our s5.
Gary.....It was different sites, different crews, and even different instruments and DC's.....results were consistent. My first thought was the crews made a calibration change or an encoder ring failure. That even does not make sense as it is different guns. That Trimble noted it was something they know about is odd to me. From the years I spent in an electronics lab, I wonder if a flash chip has failed on the instrument, but that also seems unlikely as it is multiple units.
Member
September 20, 2023 at 9:44 am
Would the shop run a check on the autolock collimation when it was brought in?.
The autolock collimation is individual to the prism being used. The shop couldn’t run such a collimation , meaningfully, without your prism.
Reading this out of interest/in case this problem ever comes up for us in the future......this made me wonder...most of my work is done with the MT1000 prism. When I do the collimation adjustments I have a standard round prism set up on a tripod. Should I be switching to the MT1000 just for the autolock collimation since that is what I use most, except when setting up a backsight (or doing a long traverse).
Thanks
Mike
You can easily collimate the tracker in the field. It’s astonishing that you don’t know of it and think a repair shop has to do it.
Field and shop calibrations have been run multiple times Robert. The prism thought Norman brought up is interesting but as far as I know, they all have been using the same prism for traversing and calibration (not sure what is happening in the shop).
terminus-nc Have you found a solution to this problem? For the past year I've been working with a group that is all Trimble S6 and S8 robots. We have experienced the same scenario with horizontal traverse errors. However, we have isolated the problem down to steep vertical angles. We recently surveyed steep terrain, such as ski slopes, with two different crews and two different Trimble instruments turning three sets of angles. Angle sets are within just a few seconds in the field, but mis-closures are 1 to 4 minutes of error. We ran traverse five times, four with Trimble and once with Topcon GT1001. The Topcon closed at 8 seconds, and the Trimble failed 3 out of 4 times. We also experience this in high-rise buildings. Calibrations and Collimations do nothing to fix this on the Trimble guns. Seems the only solution is to disable the horizontal and vertical compensators. I'm at the point where we can't trust these instruments for construction layout.
