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BOROSCOPE TECH INFO
RIGID VERSUS FLEXIBLE SCOPES
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Choosing between a rigid or flexible borescope is primarily dictated by the inspection requirements.
Do you have a straight line of access to insert the scope into the cavity or hole to be inspected?
If so, and you only need to look straight ahead or off to the side, then a rigid scope would be suitable. However, what if you could bend the borescope to go around a curve, corner or want to look around at different angles once you are inside the cavity?- a flexible fiberscope is required. Rigid borescopes have "hard" optics (Like looking through a SLR Camera, Telescope or Binoculars) whereas Flexible borescopes use fiber optic's to carry the image back to your eye. Rigid boroscopes have better resolution since you are looking through one single, continuous image. A flexible fiberscope carries the image through to your eye via a "Coherent Image bundle". This bundle is a 1-1.5mm (0.039-0.60") diameter bundle of very tiny (6-10 microns) diameter fibers creating an array of "pixels". It is magnified up to 25-50X to the eyepiece so you can see through it. Comparing optical views through a rigid scope versus a flexible boroscope is somewhat like comparing a scanned photo on your computer screen versus looking at a photograph. The technology used to enable the manufacture of these "Coherent image bundles" is expensive and a very technically challenging process. There are only a few companies in the world who can manufacture such bundles.