Testing Sokkia Total Station SET 630RK

I’ve just begun to see this model; I hope to make by the end of this month a formal training, so technicians will be evangelized in their news. Till now we have been using the Sokkia Set520K, about which I had spoken before.

The workshop will be given towards the end of May 2010, either in Honduras or El Salvador. If someone is in the environment and want to be part of this, it will be welcome.

If you can not to this date, it not out of order to leave a message, because we plan to do another later.

The meaning of the R

It comes from Reflectorless, which means you can take readings with a distance meter and with no obligation using a prism. This is handy because in a well planned job is possible to save one of the assistants, not the two because someone has to help us carrying the tripod. In an urban cadastral surveying or engineering project, to bounce on existing objects is a great advantage.

The meaning of the K

It comes from keyboard, or what is called enhanced keyboard. That letter is carried in all equipment that, besides the keyboard, has the basic function keys and includes the additional number panel and that also serves to enter letters. Of course this Set 630RK brings a keyboard on one side only, as opposed to 520K, but the technicians tell me they don’t see advantage to the twice keyboard unless they are training someone.

Variants of this model are:

• • Set230RK3
  • Set330RK3
  • Set530RK3
  • Set230RK
  • Set330RK
  • Set530RK
  • Set630RK

The difference between the first and the second group (among others), is 3, which means a 3R laser so that you can get up to 350 meters without prism and even 800 with miniprism. While the other is a laser class 2 with 200 meters reflectance nothing else. This is significant to improve the precision, capture time in quickly mode, although I recommend to you take a look at the comparison table of total stations that I showed last time.

This equipment (series 3) is said to be more robust at hardware’s level, but most noticeable improvements are in software, especially the EDM. The laser has a thinner pointer so that it can take points precisely at the edge of a beam or the corner of a wall, even having obstacles in front as a metal wire cloth or a shrub. The following iconography shows the features that bring this equipment, from which I am going to explain at least two of them:

Offset with two points, see that in the case of taking a point in a corner of a house (C), the stick can be placed inclined to indicate that we will take an offset with two points (A and B) and enter the distance that have these two points we known from the stick. Thus, the equipment detects where the point C is placed.

Area calculation, this equipment can calculate the area with up to 50 3D coordinates. This is interesting, in the case of radial measurements or when we want to have an idea of the taken area before coming to office to download and draw the polygon.

Price:

This will depend on the local distributor, as reference I’ve consulted in Froogle, and the value is nearing $7,000. But when you click on the link I get a higher value, excluding accessories.

Sokkia has distributors in each country, but with the rise of online sales, exclusivity is going diluting. In my point of view, with two sticks, two prisms and a tripod should walk there in cost, placed at the airport. With this it must be added customs costs (perhaps about $150) and taxes on sales, depending on the country.

Buy it online with a non-authorized distributor and pay shipping postage and others is not very practical. It ends up leaving more expensive and complicates warranty. Used equipment is a lottery which usually ends badly.

It is assumed that a local dealer should be in that range in price, perhaps up to $8,000. In case of being exclusive prices will be above because they have no competition. For that there are (well, there are not many but there are) distributors who sell at the regional level, outside of their country where they have representation, with all the guarantees of law and much more competitive prices.