Custom solutions for special metrology problems

For over 70 years, Brunson Instrument Company has designed, manufactured, and installed thousands of products for the 3-D metrology and alignment markets – and trained the people who use those products. On the simple side, we’ve manufactured precision parts and created subassemblies for metrology companies who integrate those products into their own. On the complex side, we’ve manufactured entire systems that we’ve designed to meet our customers’ specs, providing needed solutions for measurement challenges.

Our engineers take pride in their ability to deliver innovative solutions you can count on. We have structured our company to be creative, responsive, and in direct communication with you. So when you have a custom need, contact us to speak directly with our engineers. You’ll like the reception and the results.

We are nothing if not practical!

Let's take a closer look at the practical side of Optical Tooling. We'll go over some examples of Optical Tooling principles at work and what you can do with the instrumentation. As you read on, remember one thing - Optical Tooling is a very flexible system. The examples listed below are only a few of the things that are possible using the Optical Tooling system - you are limited only by your own imagination. Also, remember that because of this flexibility, you can often use instruments other than those shown in the illustrations below, to accomplish the same goals. (For example, a model 76 transit with a coordinate optical micrometer can often be substituted for a model 2022 alignment telescope.)

Aligning and evaluating big things to small tolerances

In the world of metrology, each measuring technology has its place. The place for Optical Tooling is in alignment, which is the geometric orientation of various components of a system, such that all components can work harmoniously as they were designed to. This is different from three-dimensional measurement technologies. These technologies, for example, can take measurements over the curve of a satellite dish to determine if the dish has the proper curvature. Optical Tooling is not the answer for such problems. Instead, “OT” allows you to evaluate geometric relationships such as linearity, parallelism, squareness, flatness, etc., between various components, especially if those components are large – and do this in a manner that is easy to see and understand.

To evaluate these geometric relationships, some or all of four basic questions often must be answered. These four fundamental questions are:

Is it st

Have Metrology, Will Travel

Our Alignment Courses

Brunson Instrument Company’s training courses are unique to the industry. That’s because our application engineers have direct experience with many types of metrology instruments and their application in many different industries, including aircraft and aerospace, printing, rolling mill, power generation, and others. You’ll receive first-rate, hands-on training from these very same, experienced application engineers. The knowledge and skills acquired will pay you back many times over by allowing you to make high quality and traceable measurements to evaluate any given project, or through the proper alignment of your equipment and the increased productivity of your machinery.

Our Instructors

Our application engineers have many years of experience using our own optical alignment products in the field.  Industies that we have served include power generation, gas compression, roll mills (paper, plastics, film, and metal), printing, shipbuilding, advanced physics laboratories, and others.  Below, we have put together some information pertaining to a few of the industries in which we have worked.