The Alignment Instrument: Some Devices & Their Uses

By Carey Bourdier


When you think about alignment, you probably often think about your automobile and especially your vehicle tires. These tires need alignment from time to time to ensure that your vehicle is safe to operate. Poor alignment can affect steering as well as your automobile's suspension, so it is wise to bring it to a trusted mechanic and have them use an alignment instrument or instruments to bring the tires back into the proper position.

However, while this type of alignment might be familiar to you, there are many other items that must be aligned properly in order to work properly. An alignment telescope, for instance, is one type of alignment instrument that is quite important in various professions. An alignment telescope also might be called a line scope or perhaps a line of sight telescope. No matter what you call it, the alignment telescope is a handy tool used for collimation as well as autocollimation.

Of course, it's probable that most people do not know much about collimation and perhaps have never heard this word before. Collimation is a way to make light beams or rays parallel. You will use an instrument such as an alignment collimator to combine many rays of light coming into the device at a variety of angles. The device will take these rays and combine them all to form one beam of light, where all the rays line up.

If you need an alignment instrument, the alignment collimator can handle a few different and important tasks. For instance, this alignment collimator (sometimes mistakenly noted as an alignment collimeter) can be used to adjust and inspect other alignment instruments. This alignment instrument, the collimator, also can help a person determine a positon in relationship to a line of sight. The alignment collimator bears a striking resemblance to the alignment telescope, but the telescope does include a sighting tube.

Surprisingly, if you were to shop for alignment collimators or perhaps alignment telescopes, you would find there are many different versions of these alignment instruments. There are basic, general-purpose alignment telescopes as well as spherical micrometer alignment telescopes and a spherical alignment telescope without a micrometer. Many people also will purchase accessories for their alignment collimator or their alignment telescope such as a fixed base, a mount or perhaps some type of rotating base.

For those that do need an alignment instrument, such as an alignment collimator or any type of alignment telescope, there are several manufacturers of these types of optical instruments. Warren Knight, for example, has been creating alignment instruments such as the alignment telescope and alignment collimator for more than a century. They also offer many other types of optical instruments, theodolites, leveling tools, navigational tools and much more.




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