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Hi my name is Max and I'm from RIDGID® and I'm here today to talk to you about the SR20 Line,
Pipe, and Sonde Locator. Basically I'm going to talk to you about the
function and the benefits and features of the SR20 Locator.
I'm also going to talk to you about some of the accessories that go along with the SR20 Locator
such as a line transmitter, an inductive signal clamp, a remote transmitter, a floatable sonde,
and the transmitter that's inside your RIDGID® SeeSnake® cameras. But first let's talk a little
bit about the SR20 and what makes it different than most locators in the industry today.
First off, is its appearance. There's these antenna balls and these additional gradient
antennas which we call. Now these housings hold three distinct antennas offset by 120
degrees from one another. There's three in here, three in here, gives us six antennas with two
additional gradient antennas. Gives us a total of eight receiving antennas for the locator.
Now, what makes this really important is because of all the offset of the antennas,
if I'm searching for a line trace using a transmitter or I'm searching for a camera
location doesn't matter where that signal is coming from I don't need to hold the
locator in any particular direction nor do I need to hold it in any particular angle
in order to pick up the rest of the signal as strong as you possibly can.
Another thing that distinguishes itself is it's the automatic gain adjustment. In traditional
locating in order to search for a signal you sometimes have to sweep and turn the locator
in certain directions in order to pick up the signal at maximum strength. You also have to
adjust the gain levels if you're too strong or not powered enough in order to receive the signal.
With the SR20, that eliminates that. The automatic gain adjustment will do everything for you making
it much easier for you. So there's no more hitting the buttons, adjusting the gain to
keep the signal in your bandwidth. And lastly the graphical display on the SR20 is very unique.
Say you're doing a line trace. On the actual screen, which we'll show an example of in a
moment, will show a set of crosshairs, that's your position. And on the screen you are going to see
a line. Could be cross, it could be straight up and down, but the line will represent the
target line or the line that you are tracing in the ground. That's for line trace mode.
And in sonde mode, or camera mode, the graphical display will actually show the
direction of my pipeline, a physical outline of my pipe setup, show the center point of
my sonde, and it will give me the depth real-time when I'm over my sonde, okay.
So let's talk a little bit about some of the accessories that go along with the
SR20. So after we looked at the SR20, we're look at some of the accessories
that go along with the SR20 that make it work in the field. First off we're
going to talk about a line transmitter. This is called the ST-305. It's a 5 watt
line transmitter that works in conjunction with your SR20 or even some of our other locators.
This is the ST-33Q our transmitter which is a more powerful transmitter in regards
to induction of a signal. Now basically how these transmitter work transmitters work is
you use your leads one lead goes to your action piping material or your conductive
material that you want to ignite or energize and the other to a ground.
Once you've hooked up your leads to your conductor, your pipe,
your cable, your tracer wire as long as it's conductive and your opposite lead to a ground,
you will now transmit a signal from your transmitter box onto your conductive line.
You will then be tracing out that conductive line with your SR20. The signal from your transmitter
is on your actual target line. You turn the SR20 on and you'll actually see a physical
representation of the line you are energized on the screen of the SR20. Basically what you do is
you put the line or the crosshairs over the target line on the screen of the SR20 and walk the line.
In some instances when you cannot hook directly up to your target line,
say like on an electrical panel, a unit such as an inductive signal clamp may be used. The
portion that opens up here and closes is called the induct is actually the clamp itself. This
portion plugs into the transmitter box whether you're using the 5 watt or the larger Q ring.
Anything that resides or passes through this ring will be energized at your frequency.
Then once again you take your SR20 locator and then locate the line as we described
earlier by keeping the crosshairs on the target line on the screen.
What's kind of neat too about the graphical display on the sr20 is
that it is showing you the target line in real time. What that means for you as the
user is as I'm walking the line I can identify say if the line makes a 90 to
the right or to the left. On the actual screen of the SR20 you're going to see
the crosshairs over the solid line and I'm going to be walking that line as it shows.
As soon as it starts to make a right-hand turn or a left or 45 or even a T, you're gonna see
on the screen the line actually starting to turn as I'm walking beyond the turn in real life. So,
in essence, I'm gonna then force myself to put the crosshairs back over the line and that'll
force me in the person, in real time, to make a right-hand turn or a left-hand turn if the
flying starts dropping off to the left bottom of the screen on the SR20. So it's giving us
real-time information as to what the target line we are tracing is actually doing beneath us.
The SR20 not only does active line tracing, say with your transmitter box, but it also does
passive line tracing. Passive line tracing is used for when you want to identify buried underground
utilities that you didn't know existed. Basically you put the SR20 in the passive line trace
mode and there is residual current from other external forces that can be utilized or could
be on actual target lines, such as water mains or gas lines, and the SR20 will identify those
lines without actually having to actively hook up any transmitter box to some of those lines.
The SR20 is outfitted with 60 Hertz for electrical current flow and it also a bandwidth of 10 Hertz
to 35,000 Hertz when it comes to passive line tracing. The SR20 will do line tracing,
whether it's active or passive, plus it will also do sonde location. Sonde location is a
pinpointed target location from say whether a remote transmitter, a floatable sonde,
or the transmitter that's located inside the camera of your SeenSanke® RIDGID® cameras.
So how does that work? Basically, this is a remote transmitter and this is kind of like
a homing beacon. The signal will be emitted from this when it's inside say a conduit or
a sewer pipe or even your camera systems inside the sewer lines or a group of conduit will give
off a signal, a directional signal, from the sewer pipe or the conduit.
Place the SR20 in sonde mode at 512 Hertz and the SR20 will then pick up the signal that is
emitted from one of those transmitters. It will then take you over the target,
it will then show you the direction of the pipeline that it is that the remote
transmitter or any of the other transmitters are sitting in, it'll give you an outline of
what the pipe looks like, and it'll give you the depth of that transmitter in the ground.
The SR20 is very accurate, fast, and easy to use when it comes to both line tracing and for
sonde location. Let's try an example of both the trace and a sonde location using the SR20.
We're utilizing a remote transmitter. Remember that the remote transmitter
and the transmitters from RIDGID® are all at 512 Hertz sonde, okay. We're going to
utilize the SR20 locator for this particular sonde locate. So let's first now turn the
transmitter on I mean the SR20 on and make sure that we are in 512 Hertz sonde mode and
you can see on the very left it says 512 Hertz and it shows a picture of a sonde.
Okay so immediately we see on the screen the top left a number 2715,
and it fluctuates a little bit, but that is basically our proximity strength or how close
we are to our remote transmitter. So what I want to do first is maximize that signal.
If I get closer to my target, or the remote transmitter, that number increases. It gets
higher and higher and basically until we get to a point where we can't maximize that signal anymore.
Right now it's reading roughly 3,900 and some change almost 4,000. So basically if
I go to the left, falls off. If I go to my right it, falls off. If I go forward,
that number falls off and if I go backwards the number falls off. So roughly around 4,000
was our maximum signal and now what I want to do is now dial in exactly
our location and direction of which that that remote transmitters is in.
If you see the crosshairs in the center of the screen, that is my location in proximity
to the actual remote transmitter. If I walk to the left, I see that there is a little
iron cross symbol floating out there. I'm just going to place the crosshairs over that unit
and now magically appears a double outline that basically represents the pipeline beneath me.
If my remote transmitter was laying in the pipe beneath me,
that's what the pipe would look like. Now there's also that dotted line in
the center of the screen that's called our equator line and basically that cuts the
remote transmitter or any transmitter right down the center. If I walk to the right,
there is another one of those sets of iron crosses and basically that's the other end of the signal.
There's two poles is which we call that for every signal that we tried to locate.
So I found the one on the right, I found the one on the left and dead center right
over this dotted line is the equator line and where those two intersect,
my pipeline and equator line, is the signal or the transmitter right beneath me.
There's the transmitter right below. And if you see at the bottom left of the screen it
says roughly 8" beneath me. So from the transmitter to the tip of the ball is
roughly 8". And it's just that easy to locate a remote transmitter or a camera location.
Lastly, it doesn't matter which angle I hold the locator, it will always hold the pipeline
true to form. So let's see a clear example of that real quick. Just get on the target
and if I rotate this locator you see how that line will pivot and hold itself true to form.
Now let's do a sample line trace utilizing a RIDGID® line transmitter and the SR20 locator.
Now let's do a line trace using a line transmitter and the SR20 locator. Here we're looking at a 5
watt transmitter and we're hooked up to a gas line, a gas tracer wire on a gas line,
and we have our ground using a grounding rod. We have the transmitter on producing the signal
and we're going to use the SR20 line tracer. Once again I'm going to turn the unit on and
make sure that we are on the same frequency 33 kilohertz, that we are on the transmitter box.
Now immediately on the screen let's see here we're going to see a solid line on
the screen and the crosshairs. The crosshairs once again is my position and the line on the
screen is the actual line that we are tracing or want to trace. You can see if I turn the
angle of the SR20, I've now straightened out that line and the arrow pointing to
my right saying walk over to the right until I get the crosshairs directly over the line.
There you have it. I can drop the unit onto the floor to give me a true depth.
I'm reading 3 foot 4 inches in this direction and doesn't matter which
way I rotate the unit it's gonna have or show the pipeline true to true to itself
in the ground. Now let's walk a little bit and see where this pipeline goes.
Basically straight out to the street. It's a tad bit deeper when we get to the asphalt. Now it's
reading 4' 2". Center myself, get the exact read, and there you have it. 4' 1" below me. Doesn't
matter which way I rotate this unit, it'll hold the pipeline true to form making the SR20 one of
the easiest locators to locate in the business today. And there's the pipeline that we traced.
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