Tool Review: Oasis Scientific Vividia D3145 USB Articulating Borescope
Inspecting the inside of a small component and being able to show the customer visual evidence of the repair that needs to be made presents many benefits, especially if the technician doesn’t have to disassemble that component. Matt Fanslow of Riverside Automotive in Red Wing, Minnesota, enjoyed using the Oasis Scientific Vividia D3145 USB Articulating Borescope for this reason and many others.
“I really like the very small diameter (4.5mm) 180-degree articulating probe,” Fanslow says. “It’s small enough to easily sneak in through glow plug ports to view within the cylinder, like the top of the piston, cylinder walls, and valves.”
The borescope is ideal for diesel engines but can be used on a variety of jobs. He has found burnt valves, a hole in a piston, and evidence of valve to piston contact on various vehicles by using this tool. Not to mention, he also used the tool to snake up into heater housings to find leaking heater cores and evaporators, broken air doors, and more.
“The sky is the limit with what you can use it for,” he says. “It’s one of those tools that sometimes you forget to use, and [then] in retrospect think about how much time you could have saved, or [how you could have] simply verified a diagnosis or suspicion.”
When the tool arrived, it came in a sturdy case for easy storage and safe keeping. It also came with a manual.
Fanslow admits that he is one who rarely reads the manual that comes with tools, but in this case, he says it’s needed to understand the proper application to view the camera image, aside from the camera being very intuitive to use.
To set up the borescope, Fanslow says users can simply download and install the appropriate application as instructed in the manual, then plug the unit into a device, and that’s it. The setup is easy, and the tool is extremely easy to use, Fanslow says.
“It’s articulating, so you do have to sometimes work out your bearings … but that’s not the tool’s fault or a design fault,” he advises.
In comparison to the Oasis Scientific Vividia AbleScope VA-800 Borescope that he owns, Fanslow says the probe diameter is not only smaller (4.5mm versus 8.5mm), but the clarity of images when up close is better, making the D3145 “vastly superior” in his opinion.
The only way to make it better, according to Fanslow, would be to make the D3145 fully articulating; however, Vividia does offer similar products that have fully articulating capabilities.
Overall, Fanslow found the Oasis Scientific Vividia D3145 USB Articulating Borescope easy to use and said it is one of those “need-to-have-tools” in a professional repair shop.
