Hi, Can someone points me in the right direction with this problem. I need to buy a calibrated device that can measure the speed of an object to within +/-1%. The object is fairly small at about 3" diameter and moving at about 150mph in a known path. Is there something like a calibrated laser speed trap that I can buy from somewhere that will give me these measurements? We don't really have time to engineer something at the moment, so an off the shelf solution would be perfect. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Yen
If you don't have time to engineer, why would you expect someone else, who is not a vendor, to do it for you. If I knew, without search or effort where you could get one, I might happily let you know. If I did that kind of consulting for a living, I would quote you a price. But I do not. Bill
This uses microwaves rather than lasers but it looks like it will do what you want quite nicely. http://www.radarsport.com/equipmentStalker.html Accuracy ± 0.1 MPH Speed Range 1-300 MPH Target Acquisition Time 0.01 Seconds Microwave System Ka Band, 20 mw Weight 3.2 Pounds Data Output TTL and RS-232 Output Sample Rate 31.25 Per Second Display Units MPH, KPH and Knots Estimated Range (baseball) 450 feet Price $2500.
150mph is 220 ft/sec which is at the lower end of what archery and shooting chronographs can measure. Check out Oehler ( http://www.oehler-research.com/ ) or Chrony ( http://chrony.ca/ ) suppliers. Ghost
Bill, For pete's sake, lay off the guy, would you? People ask for vendor recommendations quite often on newsgroups. You need to learn to relax a little bit. Opto
Also from the same manufacturer: "Many may not understand why radar performance and clocking distance is so important. To get correct readings, a radar needs to be placed in the line of travel of objects (it cannot clock objects at angles or as they go by). In the real world, the radar gun needs to be placed far away from the target. That is why Stalkers are designed to provide extraordinarily long clocking range. " So that 1% accuracy implies cos(a)>=0.99 or less than 8 degrees deviation from velocity angle.
