Borescope

A fiber borescope is used for inspection work, in cases when the person doesn’t have direct access the given part, like examining small components in tightly packed equipment – engines, relief valves, rupture discs, piping, boiler flames. The great advantage of the borescopes in general is that allow you to inspect a given part without the need to dissemble it, which is a huge advantage and will save you a lot of man hours. This article contains some technical information about fiber borescopes and a brief review of three models available on the market.

The construction of a fiber borescope consists of a flexible fiber optic bundle with an eyepiece at one end, and a lens at the other. Typically, the lens is a wide-angle lens type, which is characterized by wide angle of view, hence a larger, sweeping perspective and better depth of field than a standard camera lens. There are some fiber borescope models that use an additional fiber to carry light from an external source to illuminate the material being inspected, for clearer viewing. But it must be noted that fiber borescopes are not perfect. They introduce a certain amount of image distortion, especially the lower class models. But nevertheless, fiber borescopes are perfect for inspection of engines, equipment, tubing, pipes, castings, and other hard-to-access cavities.

The Fiber Optic Snake Cam is a model from Provision /a famous brand in the borescope industry/ that is based on innovative new fiberoptic technology. It fits into holes as small as 1/4 inch diameter, enabling you to look behind walls, down into drains, inside engines and hundreds of other places, resulting in significant time and money savings. The cable is flexible and multi-directional to allow precise viewing. The price of this instrument is around $360.

SDB Flexible Fiber Optic Borescope is also a very interesting product. SDB stands for Small Diameter Borescope and like the Snake Cam can fit in holes as small as 1/4 inch in diameter. This tool has an auto-fix function that allows you to adjust the cable into any position and it will stay fixed in place, until you decide to change it. This feature permits one-handed operation.

Another model of interest is the Lenox Fiberscope designed to tackle tough inspection problems in highly inaccessible and inhospitable places. Its construction guarantees a highly uniform fiber configuration through the length of the probe so it can produce the best possible image resolution and virtually zero distortion.

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