Which are Better for Tube Measurement - LASER Scanners to Ball Probes?
|
|
|
In a practical sense, when it comes to measuring tube shapes, ball probes and lasers have similar accuracy capabilities.
Even though ball probe points are about twice as accurate as laser points, the accuracy of both is so high that the slight difference in accuracy between the two kinds of points is so slight that makes almost no difference in measuring fabricated tube. What creates the bulk of the deviation are outside factors – like deformation in cylinders and measuring technique.
A much smaller number of points are probed with measuring a tube straight with ball probe. A very large number of points are recorded when using a scanner. The more deformation exists in a tube shape, the more the two methods differ will find differing centerlines.
If you were to measure a ground rod with the ball and the laser, then it should make little difference in the centerline position. Both will be very accurate and repeatable.
Which One is Best In Real-World Applications?
There are cases where either types of measurement make little difference. However, the LASER scanner can often find a more true centerline because it uses many more surface points to find the centerline than does the ball probe.
Other Pages
- See VTube-LASER
