FEATURE Made to measure
ToolKit takes a look at two budding sectors of the Measuring Tools market – lasers and markers.
MENTION measuring tools and, for many people, the first thing that springs to mind will be tape measures. These ubiquitous must-haves can be found at the hips and toolboxes of tradesmen up and down the nation.
The sector, however, has been continuously innovating and finding new solutions to making measuring ever more precise and efficient – solutions which are primed to flourish further now the political turmoil of the last three years is seeming to settle.
We spoke to Hultafors Group and Royd Tool Group to find out more about the future of laser markers and marking instruments.
HULTAFORS GROUP With Peter Wabel, Category Manager Hand Tools
In your experience, what has been behind the rise of the laser tools?
Most self-respecting tradespeople now own lasers. A must for kitchen fitters, tilers, dry wall installers and a host of other tasks, the time saving that a quality laser product affords is priceless. Not only delivering substantial time saving, they also deliver superior accuracy.
What innovations have there been in laser technology in recent years?
One of the most notable and important innovations has been the arrival of green laser diodes. Green is the most readily recognised colour in the spectrum to the human eye. The benefit is that the generated line is much more easily perceived.
These individuals are prepared to pay the price for this quality and the cost differential can be huge, you can pay from £3 to £40 for a tape measure and from £50 to over £500 for a laser." 20
However, there is green and there is Real Green, as used in Hultafors’ laser levels. Real Green diodes generate the light directly and not by refraction through a red crystal as is the common option in many levels. This creates more accurate, cleaner and easier-to-read lines and dots with reduced speckling. They are also usable in a wider temperature band, which is from -10O
C to 50O C.
Real Green lasers are also more energy efficient, giving extended battery life or longer periods of use between charges.
With these benefits, why have green Lasers not replaced red ones entirely?
Red diodes are used for such a multiplicity of applications that they have become a commodity and are therefore manufactured in huge quantities delivering an economy of scale. Green diodes are only currently used for lasers, resulting in much smaller production runs, which deliver a higher manufacturing cost per unit. Depending on the number of diodes used in a unit, it can result in the purchase price being £100-£200 more expensive than a unit using red diodes.
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