| Author | Message | ||
     Steve Bussey |
I keep hearing about smart levels, but apparently the Merritt Island area only has dumb ones, cause none of the stores have any. Who makes these things? | ||
| Tom R. Hutchison |
Check out Macklanburg-Duncan. They produce several models of "smart levels" You can purchase them on-line at: Amazon.com. Look in the "Tools & Hardware" section. We had one at Express for the builder assist program. It was wonderful. Sometimes "too accurate", you end up spending a lot of time getting that last .01 degree of error out. Tom | ||
| Gary Markwardt |
Not sure how "smart" these levels are, but they do have a digital readout to the nearest 0.1 degree. Trying to get things set to that last 0.1 degree while building at Express always struck me like measuring to the nearest thousandth of an inch and marking it with a well used "Sharpie" pen -- spurious accuracy? I'm sure lots of flying Express' were built with the dumb levels and are doin' fine. My 2 cents. Gary | ||
| Sven Eriksson |
Hi I have used a levelling instrument for setting up the wing jigs (both at the same time),fuselage and empennage jigs. It will make it very easy to get an accurate leveling compared to doing the same job with even a "smart level" because this kind of level only works locally in contrast to the levelling instrument that puts up a "reference surface" above your object from wich you can measure vertical distances very accurately. I know that an instrument of this kind are very expensive but try to borrow one for the limited period of time when you are setting up your jigs. It will pay off !! Drawback when using this method is that it needs two people, one at the instrument and another holding a precision scale at the measuring points. By using the levelling instrument I found, for example, that WL40 scribed along my lower fuselage was not following a straight line aft of STA 95. It curved slightly upwards aft of that point. This would have been impossible to find out with only a normal level. Another $0.02 Sven Eriksson |