Thanks Andy. Yes i know the laser light will travel straight, what I meant was the straightness of the line that is generated by the cylindrical lens that is presumably a function of how accurately machined the lens is? Is testing this what you meant by twist in the horizontal projection? How do you measure this at work, do you use a water level?

Before starting this laser project I did something similar with the image sensor focused on a clear tube that was part of a water level, although I could easily repeatably locate the bottom of the meniscus to around 0.01mm resolution I had a problem getting much measurement accuracy due to the meniscus 'sticking' to the glass tube due to capillary action so gave up.I only used a short u-bend setup, maybe this was the problem and having much more volume of water in the system would overcome this problem.