Borescope

Borescopes are inspection devices with a rigid or flexible optical tube for insertion into bores and cavities for visualization. They are used in a wide range of industrial quality control and inspection applications. A borescope consists of an objective lens positioned in front of a long relay tube containing an image relay and an illumination relay. The relay tube can be rigid or flexible and is followed by a handpiece containing an eyepiece or direct video optics. Rigid borescopes are preferred over flexible borescopes when possible as they have better image quality at a lower cost. When you cannot access what you need to inspect with a rigid borescope, then a flexible borescope offers a great alternative.

When it comes down to finding cheap borescopes, it's not so easy. Buyers must beware, when they are looking for a cheaper solution, because most products advertised in the price range of $300-$500 are not even close to being real borescopes and are inaccurately called borescopes. These so-called "borescopes" produce unclear images and are made of cheap materials. There are even several tool distributors that actually sell these cheapo plastic "toys" represented as borescopes for $399.-the optical quality is very poor and crafted very similar to the $10.99 type so-called "borescopes" sold in gun stores.

In fact, borescopes offered in the $300 - $600 range are made of all plastic including the lens, or designed as disposable medical devices, or manufactured with lens materials where the index of refraction changes- gradient lens materials ("Grown" glass that is very fragile, chemically unstable and suffers from undesirable chromatic abberations) are optically of inferior quality.

The are also some borescope alternatives, like the SIGHT-PIPE® style borescope. It is a one piece assembly that is inexpensive, very portable and easy to repair or replace as opposed to having a traditional borescope or endoscope repaired. Still, the image quality is guestionable, but if you can't afford a semi-pro borescope, you might want to try it. Many styles of SIGHT-PIPES® can be repaired or re-polished for as little as $55.00 to $85.00.

The conclusion is that as always, cheap tools end up being more expensive than the quality ones, because they often need repairs and simply don't work that good. A good advice is to spend more money initially, but be able to get perfect images. A real borescope will pay off itself quite quickly, because it saves a lot of time and effort, as you won't have to disassemble the whole machine that is being inspected.

Upper Endoscopy | Borescope Lens | Camera Lens | Gradient Lens | Optical Lens | Rod Lens |