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Over 40,000 Hand and Power Tools.
Welcome to our family of over 400,000 satisfied customers.
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Over 40,000 Hand and Power Tools. Welcome to our family of over 400,000 satisfied customers. |
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Ph: 800-347-5096 Hours: M-F 6:30a - 4:00p (Pacific) |
FAQs
Frequently Asked Questions - Laser Levels |
| What is a Rotary Laser? |
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| On a rotary laser the laser level beam spins around in a circle. If it spins fast enough your
eyes will see the laser as a line instead of a moving point. Inexpensive rotary lasers have a motor
that has two or three old-fashioned bubble level vials that tell you when you've got a
perfectly horizontal or vertical line. More sophisticated models use gravity to self-level. |
| In order to prevent injury the power of the laser is strictly limited. It will be dimly visible
inside a normally lit interior at a reasonable distance. Red colored laser enhancement glasses will
make it more visible at a greater distance by filtering out competing colors. The new generation of
green lasers are somewhat more visible indoors because our eyes have their greatest sensitivity in
that color. But outside, when competing with sunlight, the beam -- whether red or green -- will NOT
be visible more than a few feet away. |
| To use a rotary laser outdoors you need a "detector" (also called a
"receiver"). The detector is a palm-sized box with a sensor on one side. The sensor is
tuned to the frequency (color) of the laser and can detect the pulsing of the rotating laser beam.
The faster the pulsing the further away the detector can sense the beam. The detector has two ways
of indicating where the beam is. The first is an LCD display that tells you if the beam is striking
high, low, or in the center of the detector. The second is a series of different tones that tell
you when the beam is high, low or centered. |
| While most laser tools still use a red beam, the latest generation, as we said, sports a green beam for greater indoor visibility. This means that you need the right detector for each color. The appropriate detectors are listed on all our individual tool pages and you're probably better off staying with the same brand for both laser and detector. |
| Are Laser Levels Better Than Optical Levels? |
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| If you hang drop-ceilings for a living the answer is absolutely YES! For almost all other applications laser levels have one large advantage; they let you take a person off of your crew. Rather than one person doing the sighting and another taking readings with the rod, you set up the laser level then use a rod with a laser detector to get the readings yourself. A two person job becomes a one person job. That one advantage will let you pay for the laser in just a few jobs. |
| These links show you the rotary lasers that MyToolStore.com sells and
the individual pages will show you the features of each: |
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| Should I Spend the Extra Money to Get a Self-Leveling Rotary Laser? |
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| Unless you are already very comfortable using optical leveling instruments the answer is almost
certainly YES. With optical instruments the accuracy of your work depends upon how precisely you
level the scope at the start of the job and it’s the same with a manual laser level. A slight
error in alignment can mean a large mistake. For example, if you are "off" by just the
thickness of the scribed line on the vial while aligning the bubble, something that’s being
measured at one hundred feet away will be off by about three inches! |
| A self-leveling rotary laser uses gravity to achieve perfect alignment. There are a number of
different methods, but the most common is to project a laser beam through a prism that hangs like a
pendulum. You just set the instrument up to be roughly level and gravity does the rest. The result
is that the instrument is as accurate as is stated in its specifications. |
| Many self-leveling lasers have additional features that can be of great assistance. For example, the unit will flash or turn off it it's accidentally bumped after being set up. Some units will self-level in the vertical as well as the horizontal plane. |
| The links below will show you our least expensive
manual rotary levels. They're all well built and will give you the accuracy
they say they will - if you do your critical part: |
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| Do I Need a Laser Level With Two Beams? What's the Advantage? |
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| By splitting the beam using a half-silvered mirror one part of the laser beam spins around to create the illusion of a line while the other part projects straight out of the top of the rotor to create a single dot that's directly above the level. Manufacturers call this a "plumb line" but you won't see a line, what you'll see is a dot. The usefulness of a laser level with two beams is largely a matter of personal preference. We’d love to hear from contractors who find this feature helpful. Send e-mail to MyToolStore.com and let us know what you think! |
| When you've set the laser to spin in the vertical plane the dot that normally projects upward will be in the horizontal plane. This can be helpful for laying out interior walls. Remember that it's just a dot and since it's not pulsing it can't be detected in sunlight by the laser detector. It has to be visible to your eye so its range is limited. |
| Is Speed of Rotation Important? |
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| As stated earlier, higher rotation speeds allow detectors to read the laser beam at greater distances outdoors. However, because of the way our eyes work, higher speeds will make the beam less detectable when used indoors. The slower the beam travels, the brighter it appears to our eyes. The exact speed depends on the individual so the best lasers for interior use will be the type with variable speeds. This allows you to set the rotation to best match your vision. |
| What Good Are Self-Leveling Pocket Laser Levels? | |||||
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| There's a nifty chart that answers that question by showing you how much money
you can save doing a particular job (transfering plumb reference points from floor to ceiling). The
numbers are impressive: Calculate Your
Savings |
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| These great little tools come in several varieties, capable of
generating up to five laser points all at exact right angles to each other: |
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| And if all you want to do is transfer points between the floor and ceiling, try one of theses inexpensive new tools: | |
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| What Else Do You Have in Laser Levels? | |||||
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| First, a brief diversion: One of the neatest applications of lasers in the tool world has been their use, not in leveling, but in measuring distances. You may have seen those little pocket calculator sized tools that realtors are so fond of for quickly estimating room sizes. Based on sonar technology, they let you point, click, and see the distance on a little LED screen. They're fast — inexpensive — but not terribly accurate. (They're about 99.5% accurate, which is fine for realtors who don't want to lug around 50 foot tape measures and keep asking people to hold the other end for them.) And if you're a realtor and still don't have one of these, you should follow this link and buy one: Sonin Multi-Measure 45 But then, a few years ago, the engineers at Leica figured out how to do the same job — much more accurately — with laser light instead of sound waves. When we first started selling them eight years ago they were in the $500.00 range, but like most things electronic, they been getting cheaper and better ever since. Boasting accuracy of up to a sixteenth of an inch at 650 feet, they've gone from realtors' purses and pockets to contractors' tool boxes. Here's what we carry now:
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| Okay, back to laser levels: If you mount a high-tech little laser level in an old-fashioned hand level, you can extend the
range of the level so greatly that it becomes a whole new breed of tool. Laser torpedo levels are
great for plumbing runs and general interior trim and remodeling work. Some have adapters that snap
on over the laser to bend or split the beam into two points at 90° angles, or to spread the
point out into a line. |
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| Checkpoint added a whole new twist to this type of level by building in a "digital inclinometer." What it does is sense the angle of the level and display it in degrees and fractions of a degree. Wedge Technologies pioneered this technology years ago in a product they called the "Smart Level." But it was a bit ahead of its time and Wedge sold their patents. In Las Vegas our building inspectors bought this type of "digital inclinometer" a few years ago (but too late for Wedge) and currently use it to check the exact angle on all handicap ramps. So then local contractors had to buy the same gizmos to stay ahead of the game... Installers of high-end sound systems (THX, etc.) use the Checkpoint to measure angles of sound dispersion so spacecraft can rocket by your ears at appropriate levels and angles. |
| Here are the "regular" torpedo laser levels: | |||
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| One of the handiest and most versatile laser tools is a neat little
box that looks similar to the lasers that project points at perfect right angles. Introduced years
ago by CST/Berger as the "Wizard," these little tools have just gotten better with age.
They're self-leveling and all of them project a laser "cross" -- horizontal and
vertical lines. While most of them aren't quite bright enough for exterior work, they all make
interior jobs -- like wallpapering -- a whole lot easier: |
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| And finally, whatever laser level you choose, take a look at LaserJamb. It replaces the usual
tripod with a nifty support device that sets up fast and lets you adjust the height of your laser
line a lot more easily, quickly and accurately than any ordinary tripod ever can. |
| The LaserJambs (there are three versions) are here: |
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