Laser Distance Measure

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@yahoogroups.com, "Harko Schwartz" <ncmeinc@...>
wrote:

>
> What are you trying to measure. Do you want to do linear calibration or
> squareness. In general you are better off with 2 separate instruments.

<snip>


I was on about linear measurement. A point and click device that just
measures - we do the actual calibration ourselves.

For example, I own a linear measuring device about the size of a house
brick (80x60x200mm) which is battery powered and costs less than 100
pounds sterling. All you do is switch on, place the "blunt" end
against a reference point, point the beam at the surface that you want
to measure the distance to and click. You then get an almost
instantaneous reading in metric or imperial units as required. Its
accuracy is quoted at about 5mm over 30 metres - fine for estimating
how much carpet or wallpaper to order but not nearly accurate enough
to replace our tape measure.

We're not really looking for an all singing, all dancing solution,
just a compact tool that will accurately do what a tape measure does
by triangulating off of a surface without the need to go near that
surface. To get the accuracy, it would probably need to be wider than
my device to allow sufficient distance between the two known points
within the device.

The devices you mentioned are probably as close as we'll get but are
far more expensive than we want to pay. It is possible that like a
lot of stuff these days they suffer from "feature bloat" when we only
really want something to perform one or two simple functions well and
reliably.

Cheers
John