Leica Total Station Care: Setup, Calibration, Service
A total station is a precision instrument that spends its life on construction sites. Everything about that sentence is in tension. Good habits around setup, cleaning, storage and calibration are what decide whether the instrument holds its accuracy for a decade or drifts quietly out of specification without telling you.
Here is the practical version, from the technicians who service these instruments.
Setting up properly
Most accuracy problems begin at the tripod.
Set the tripod on ground that will stay put. Soft ground, fresh fill and hot asphalt all move under the weight of an instrument over the course of a setup, and the movement is slow enough that you will not notice it happening. Push the legs in firmly and extend to roughly chest height, which keeps the instrument at a comfortable working level and makes it easier to mount without straining.
Press down on the tripod head to confirm it is seated before you put anything on it. Then lift the total station with both hands around the body, align the arrows on the instrument and tribrach, and secure it before you let go. More instruments are damaged during this thirty seconds than in the rest of the working day.
Level carefully and check the level again after you have been working for a while, particularly in direct sun. Tripods move as they heat.
Basic operation
The keyboard, screen and soft keys are straightforward once the sequence is familiar. A typical survey setup runs like this.
- Create a measure job file, where your survey points will be recorded.
- Create a separate data job file, so the positions of the points you are surveying are stored apart from the measure job. Keeping these separate saves confusion later.
- Select the codelist you created in the office software.
- Enter the instrument height and the heights of the reflector poles you are using, since distance calculations depend on both.
- Aim at the prism and record.
Entering the wrong instrument or pole height is the most common field error and the most annoying to unpick afterward, because the data looks entirely reasonable until it does not match anything.
If your team is learning, structured training pays for itself in reshoots avoided. See training options, and read our four operational tips that save time on site.
Cleaning
Dust and moisture are the two things that quietly degrade a precision optical instrument.
Use a lint free cloth and compressed air on glass surfaces. Do not use solvents, and do not use whatever cloth is in the truck, because grit in a cloth will scratch optics permanently.
If prisms or optics fog when you move from a warm vehicle into cold air, leave them to equalize rather than wiping them. Wiping condensation off cold glass drags whatever dust is present across the surface.
Wipe the instrument body down at the end of a dusty day. Grit that gets into moving parts becomes a grinding compound, and that shows up years later as wear during a teardown.
Maintenance
Like any precision equipment that works for a living, a total station benefits from scheduled attention rather than attention when something goes wrong.
Put regular service dates in the calendar rather than waiting for a problem. Keep firmware current, since manufacturer updates address measurement behavior as well as features. And take note of small changes: a slightly stiff tangent screw, a tribrach that feels loose, a battery that no longer holds a day. Those are early signals, and they are cheaper to address than what they become.
More on total station maintenance
Storage
Store the instrument in its hard case, in a moisture free environment that is not subject to temperature extremes. A site trailer in August and an unheated warehouse in January are both hard on optics and electronics.
Remove the batteries before any extended period of storage. Batteries left in equipment are a common cause of avoidable damage, and it is entirely preventable.
Make sure the case is genuinely dry before closing it. Sealing a damp instrument into a case creates exactly the environment you were trying to avoid.
Calibration: field check or bench calibration?
This is the part people get wrong, and the distinction matters.
A field calibration is a check you perform yourself. The instrument runs through its own routine to correct for angle and compensator error. It takes minutes and it should be part of your routine, particularly after transport, after a temperature swing, or before any work with a tight tolerance.
A bench calibration is work performed by a technician against certified reference standards. It confirms the instrument genuinely meets manufacturer specification and produces a certificate saying so. A field check tells you the instrument is internally consistent. Only a bench calibration tells you it is right.
Send an instrument in when:
- It has been a year since the last certification, or your quality system requires an interval
- It was dropped, knocked over, or the tripod went over, even if it appears fine
- Measurements disagree with a known distance or with another instrument
- Field calibration fails, or has to be repeated more often than it used to
- The work needs a certificate, which covers most survey, legal and forensic deliverables
- The instrument is three years or older and has never had a full service
Where to get it done
We run a service and calibration center in Boise, Idaho, staffed by certified, ESD trained technicians. The service room is built for the work: ESD safe flooring, benches, chairs and mats, all tested, plus a maintained collimator and baseline referenced against a certified 1 inch instrument.
Two levels of service are available. A Check and Adjust collimates the angle and electronic compensation systems, checks laser alignment and accuracy, bubble vials and sights, and cleans external surfaces. A full inspection produces a certificate stating that the instrument meets manufacturing specification and has passed all test procedures.
For older instruments, usually three years or more, an extended maintenance package is a complete teardown to replace broken down grease, inspect moving parts for wear, and reassemble with fresh grease and adjustments. It is the difference between an instrument that is limping and one that works like new.
We service Leica iCON, TS and TPS total stations, and we also work on Leica GPS and rotating lasers along with the hardware that comes with those kits: tripods, bipods, rods and levels.
Read the full interview with our service manager
Send us your instrument
Email service@datumtechsolutions.com. We will ask a few questions about what the instrument needs and send shipping instructions. Keep your tracking number until you have confirmation it arrived.
A quote follows once a qualified technician has evaluated the equipment, which can be as quick as a couple of days for a total station that needs adjustment and firmware only.
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