Tips for How To Choose a Borescope

April 15, 2021

For many tasks in manufacturing, inspections are essential to maintain high-quality standards. For most parts, workers look for flaws by hand using the same skills and techniques that have existed since the earliest forms of part casting. However, many manufactured elements essential to complex machines also have interior surfaces not conveniently accessible to the naked eye. Since their invention in the 60s, borescopes have been supporting factory workers, engineers, and mechanics for generations.

The purpose of these tools is to put the employees’ eyes where they can’t go by allowing a tiny camera to project interior spaces back onto a screen. However, many details make borescopes useful to some jobs and not others. The best tip for how to choose a borescope is to consider the elements of the objects being inspected. In particular, borescopes come in an array of diameters to fit into spaces as small as just a few millimeters. Besides this, the shape of the interior space also affects which borescope type is ultimately best for the job.

When To Choose a Rigid Borescope

The first-ever borescope was a rigid type designed for use in a lab. Featuring a thin hollow barrel, users can insert the camera into small spaces. Often, this type is best for short paths with no turn. Since the metal barrel can’t flex, there’s no looking further within a machine or inside components that have chamber around bends. All the same, rigid borescopes are very reliable with quality imaging.

When To Choose a Flexible Borescope

As you would imagine, flexible borescopes are a must for jobs that lack a straight path to the trouble location. Since many workshops and garages use borescopes rather than labs these days, flexible varieties are very popular. In particular, they are exceptionally useful for probing constructed machinery that’s impossible or impractical to take apart again.

Workers can easily check out functioning engines, vents through buildings, interior wall spaces, and other small or sealed-off areas this way. No matter how many twists and turns there are within a space, the fiber optic cords bend along with it.

When To Choose a Videoscope

One of the best tips for how to choose a borescope is to consider how high quality the output video needs to be. The final type of borescope is easily the most advanced in this respect. As the name would suggest, videoscopes are capable of perceiving images in high resolution on par with modern consumer-grade camcorders. In other words, these devices can better display a live feed view for a much more accurate inspection.

Besides a few other streamlined features, the videoscope also often has a remotely posable dorsal tip. Though this might seem like a minute detail, the possible camera lets engineers actively look around the insides of engines and components for a speedier inspection.