reading a dial caliper

Cougsfan · Feb 27, 2023

The calipers that offer a display in fractions have always made me scratch my head. I have nothing against fractions, but I have a hard time quickly visualizing if 23/64th is larger or smaller than 3/8th of an inch.

oldtimer 66 · Feb 27, 2023

At one time a long time ago, I ran a large G&L floor mill/ a HBM. It was a 7" bar machine with a quill. It also had a shaper attachment, 40 feet of column travel "x" or , I can't remember the vertical travel. The scales thru peep sights were all fractional. Beside all the hand tools, wrenches, scales, micrometers, tape measures you needed to run the machine, you also needed a steno pad and a #2 pencil with a good eraser. Easy eh!. I learned after 50 plus yrs in manufacturing you don't mix decimals and fractions. It's a "No No". Later.

LittleBill21 · Feb 27, 2023

GeneV said:
Hwwwat?!! Heresy, I can't even...I bet as a kid, your room was quite messy.

lol the equipment can't hold that tight.

big bubba · Feb 27, 2023

i remember back in my machinist days...reading a vernier scale on a mic or caliper. & probably accurate as a scale if the machinist's eye is accurate. i quickly converted to dig readout so long ago. love the old tools though

Smokeydog · Feb 27, 2023

Digital batteries are a pain particularly in cold weather. Got a solar power assisted digital caliper for my unheated shop 17 years ago. Still on original battery.

alexpops · Feb 27, 2023

turbo36 said:
Yup! +/- .003 accuracy

turbo36 said:
I can’t begin to tell you how many times over my career I had a customer ask me “tolerance?” “Can’t you just make it perfect?” My reply was always “sure I can, but each move of the decimal point to the left increases the cost by a factor of 10. How close do you want it?”

I've always preferred the C___ Hair scale for Tolerances. Blonde ... pretty much the holy grail, red ... close enough, brown or black ... keep working.

turbo36 · Feb 27, 2023

alexpops said:
I've always preferred the C___ Hair scale for Tolerances. Blonde ... pretty much the holy grail, red ... close enough, brown or black ... keep working.

Yeah, you know highly inappropriate but dammit that's the way we talked! I am a pretty prolific user of swearwords, I blame it all on working on the factory floor at GM,Ha Ha. Or maybe it was when I was hanging structural steel, or working on the farm or well maybe I just learned it on my own.

2515R Dude · Feb 27, 2023

Cougsfan said:
The calipers that offer a display in fractions have always made me scratch my head. I have nothing against fractions, but I have a hard time quickly visualizing if 23/64th is larger or smaller than 3/8th of an inch.

It is why normal ppl converted to metrics long time ago.

WranglerX · Feb 27, 2023

Only time I convert decimal to fraction or millimeter, is when I trying to find a "close enough" drill bit (fractional)....

But there is this....

Convert for Windows

Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert many of the most popular units.

joshmadison.com

Must be something similar for Android or IPhone...

nyone · Feb 28, 2023

I find that it's faster to read and get an accurate measurement with a standard dial caliper. the reason is you really need your caliper to be total parallel to the piece your measuring and the best way to do this is to rock the caliper on the piece and read the dial while you do it. The biggest/smallest reading would be the most accurate measurement.
But for a piece of pipe like this it prob dosnt matter much.

GeneV · Feb 28, 2023

2515R Dude said:
It is why normal ppl converted to metrics long time ago.

Metric system is for bidet users.

Cougsfan · Feb 28, 2023

GeneV said:
Metric system is for bidet users.

I am not much for bidets, but having used both systems throughout my career, I sure wish the US would have adopted the metric system back in 1776. Everything is so much easier. But unfortunately my brain has become calibrated to think in inches, pounds, and BTU's.

GeneV · Feb 28, 2023

AWSubie · Feb 28, 2023

Cougsfan said:
I am not much for bidets, but having used both systems throughout my career, I sure wish the US would have adopted the metric system back in 1776. Everything is so much easier. But unfortunately my brain has become calibrated to think in inches, pounds, and BTU's.

As much as I hate to admit it; I agree.

4570Man · Feb 28, 2023

AWSubie said:
As much as I hate to admit it; I agree.

Anyone that doesn’t agree probably hasn’t spent over an hour measuring anything and then doing anything with the measurement’s. Try laying off a square building in inches and let me know how that works for you. Say it’s 30 ft square. The diagonal of that would be 42.42. Not 4 inches, .4. An engineer tape measure makes that an easier job but that’s basically just admitting metric is better but you don’t want to admit it. Next problem, let’s say you need to order concrete for a ditch that’s 28” wide, 14” deep and 300 ft long. Calculating in feet doesn’t work well. I convert everything to inches and divide back when I’m done. 28x14x3600. Then divide that number by 1728 to put it back to cubic feet. Then divide that number by 27 to get cubic yards. Let’s just do an easy problem next. Say you have a board that’s 47-5/8 of an inch that you want to cut in 3rds. That’s not that easy to divide out in your head. That same board would be 1200.09 mm. Anyone could easily divide that by 3.

2515R Dude · Feb 28, 2023

GeneV said:
Metric system is for bidet users.

Nothing is wrong with having a clean ass vs. dirty one, and I'd prefer living in a society with clean behinds.
Just a little sighn of development.

jmc · Feb 28, 2023

WranglerX said:
Only time I convert decimal to fraction or millimeter, is when I trying to find a "close enough" drill bit (fractional)....

But there is this....

Convert for Windows

Convert is a free and easy to use unit conversion program that will convert many of the most popular units.

joshmadison.com

Must be something similar for Android or IPhone...

Alexa does a good job on conversions if you ask her right. Just tonight-

"Alexa, how many pounds is 66 grams?"
"...about 2 ounces."
"Alexa, EXACTLY how many pounds is 66 grams?
"...about 2 ounces."
"Alexa, how many pounds is 66 grams EXACTLY?"
".... 0.1455052...pounds."

And Siri converted it to 0.15 pounds, on her first try.

WranglerX · Feb 28, 2023

jmc said:
Alexa does a good job on conversions if you ask her right. Just tonight-

"Alexa, how many pounds is 66 grams?"
"...about 2 ounces."
"Alexa, EXACTLY how many pounds is 66 grams?
"...about 2 ounces."
"Alexa, how many pounds is 66 grams EXACTLY?"
".... 0.1455052...pounds."

And Siri converted it to 0.15 pounds, on her first try.

I don't have Alexa...
I don't have Siri...

What am I to do.....

MAX-24-Dean · Feb 28, 2023

WranglerX said:
I don't have Alexa...
I don't have Siri...

What am I to do.....

Oh no, your in trouble by now!

Just have to do it the way it was done before technolgy got us all into the same trouble.

I learned on a slide rule, and my mental approximations have been accurate enough to correct the errors from others hitting the wrong key on thier calculators.
Next question is would I trust Alexa or Siri with a correct answer all the time. The answer to that is, (drum roll) NO!!

npalen · Mar 1, 2023

I've grown accustomed to multiplying by four when wondering about decimal inches equivalent to a know metric measurement. Example would be 18 mm times four would be a little less than 0.72 inches. Not exact by any stretch but so used to thinking in imperial making metric hard to visualize.

The U.S. definitely should have followed thru on going metric back in the seventies!

Something I did early in my career was memorizing decimal equivalents up to 32nds. Then its fairly easy to convert 64's to decimal by considering the nearest 32nd then adding about 15 thou. Have rarely used decimal equivalent charts.