Vernier Caliper

I'm looking for a 6" vernier caliper that reads in metric and in _decimal_ inches, not fractional.

Who makes 'em?

Reply to
carlDOTwest
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I'm holding one in my left hand.

Don't *all* Vernier calipers read in dec. inches (1/1000)? How would a Vernier scale work with, say 1/64ths ?

To answer your question - any Vernier caliper maker. Mine is Mitutoyo (at a guess - I'd say Japanese)

-- Jeff R.

Reply to
A.Gent

Everybody under the sun. Though I personally would recommend a Digital caliper as a simply button change and you are in metric or "standard" and unlike standard verniers..you dont need a magnifying glass to read it.

Gunner

That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there. - George Orwell

Reply to
Gunner

I have one I bought in the Sixties that reads to 128ths. and decimals. It is a Japanese brand when things from Japan were supposed to be junk. It is at work but I think it is eight divisions to refine the 1/16th marks. It is handy to size drill bits and check nominal sizes of shafts and bolts. Randy

Reply to
Randy Zimmerman

You purchase a vernier caliper reading in .001" and .02mm increments from Shars (

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) part #303-1006 for $8.00. You get the same caliper from Enco, JTS or others. I am not sure they have a fine adjustment in this size. The larger 12" versions have a fine adjustment.

Phil Teague

Reply to
Phil Teague

You purchase a vernier caliper reading in .001" and .02mm increments from Shars (

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) part #303-1006 for $8.00. You get the same caliper from Enco, JTS or others. I am not sure they have a fine adjustment in this size. The larger 12" versions have a fine adjustment.

Phil Teague

Reply to
Phil Teague

If you want a good one, Starrett 123 E&M. Not cheap, but I've never seen anything that equals them in quality or ease of reading. I have a couple 123s and prefer them to dial or digital calipers.

If you want cheap, I've got a made-in-Italy Craftsman vernier in front of me that reads in 0.05mm and 0.001". I don't know whether it's still available.

Ned Simmons

Reply to
Ned Simmons

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 10:44:13 GMT, Gunner calmly ranted:

Hey, there ya go. Do they also make one with triple readouts? (fractions/mm/in?) How accurate are they, and how much do the batteries last/cost? Anyone?

HF has both 4" and 6" digitals on sale for $15.99 this week.

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items #47257-5VGA and 47256, Carl.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

My "first grab" caliper is a 6 inch 1/128th. inch vernier. Next to it on the back plane of my workbench is a Mitutoyo decimal dial caliper. Serious measuring stuff, micrometers and such are stored in tool chests. One of my tool chests is a very old, but restored, Kennedy from the days when Kennedy's were brown - maybe from a contract job lot during WW2. I called Kennedy and spoke with a person of 25 years seniority there and she had never heard of a brown Kennedy tool chest. I did a little body work on it and repainted it dark grey with green felt lining in the drawers.

Bob Swinney

Reply to
Robert Swinney

On 17 Jul 2004 06:47:36 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Phil Teague) calmly ranted:

Wait a minute, he wants a Neanderthal version of calipers? Must be a youngun. (Grays can't read vernier scales.)

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

The Mititoyo digital calipers are pretty damn tough. I had a set that went underwater in a flood for 3 days, retrieved them, wiped them off with some cleaner, air dried them thoroughly, replaced the battery, checked accuracy, and have used them every day since for the last five years.

RJ

Reply to
Backlash

[ ... ]

Well ... we *used* to be able to read them, but now for most of us the serious glasses have to come out. :-)

One friend of mine has to take his glasses *off* instead. he is so near sighted that with them off, he focuses at about one to one-and-one-half inches. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

I'm holding an old pair by Scherr Tumico. Inches read down to

0.001", and mm down to 0.05mm (not as long a vernier scale for that one, though I have seen longer ones on others.)

Not that I have ever seen -- but I keep a nice calculator in a Ziploc baggie in the shop, so I can use it without swarf and cutting fluids getting into the calculator. (Face the keyboard and readout towards the clear back, not the front with the white space for labeling. :-)

Tradeoffs. There are some made from a fiberglass impregnated plastic, and those have the poorest accuracy specs. Most of the metal bodied ones will read to 0.0005" or 0.01mm, and are spec'd to something like +/- 0.002" throughout the 6" length. (Though I have never found one of these to be off far enough from my gauge blocks to worry about, I think that this is the manufacturers covering their rear.

For modern ones, the batteries are the same ones used in some watches, or in computer boards (2032 is one, I think). Battery life is a different matter.

First for my oldest one -- labeled by Brown & Sharpe, and it uses a different measuring technology -- a glass scale on the bottom of the groove where the rack would be in a dial caliper, and a sensor in the head. The thing uses the PX-625 mercury batteries (four of them), and those are pretty much made of unobtainium these days. I keep planning to try to make a replacement battery holder to use some lithium cells, after making sure that it will work at 6.0 V instead of the 5.36 V which the mercury cells would give. Any way if you forget to turn that one off, it will eat the batteries. But you can't get that kind anyway these days.

I have three others. I'll list them in order of acquisition:

1) Mitutoyo 0-12". Uses very small cells, and gets over a year of life -- whether it is turned on or not. This one came new and still it the shrink-wrap from a hamfest -- in a fitted wooden case. Batteries are sufficiently inconvenient to disconnect so I've never made it a practice to do this. 2) Starrett 0-6". This one is auto-off, and will eat batteries in a few months (2-3) if you leave it assembled. But the battery holder will slide easily with thumb pressure, and about a 1/8" travel will disconnect the batteries. With this, I can get a year to two of life from a pair of the large coin cells. This came from eBay -- new as far as I can tell, or barely used at the worst. It came in a fitted plastic case. 3) Mitutoyo 0-6" "absolute". (It remembers motions even when turned off.) I got this one used from an eBay auction, and have not yet had it long enough to know what the battery life is, though I have had it long enough so the batteries would have already died if they went as fast as the Starrett. Came in a fitted plastic case with foam lining which is already starting to degrade -- and with a previous owner's name scratched into it. (Also with a ticket to some kind of drawing under the foam lining in the lid. :-)

Note -- I make it a practice to keep a spare set of batteries in the case with each digital caliper (and digital micrometer), because no matter *how* long they will last, they will die on a Saturday evening of a long weekend. :-) (Though actually, the drug store carries most of these sizes, so it is not as bad as it could be.) However, I usually add enough spares for everything that I run in the shop calipers, micrometers, and the calculator) and for my and my wife's watches onto an order to MSC. They appear to have enough turnover in the batteries so I can trust them more than the ones from the drugstore -- and more likely to be known brands, too. :-)

Note that all of the above are considered top-grade calipers. Though Mitutoyo makes some of the plastic-bodied ones as well.

O.K. At this price range, you will have to expect it to eat batteries. My friend with the glasses mentioned in another followup in this thread picked up one of the cheap ones at a hamfest -- I think that it was somewhere between $9.00 and $12.00 -- and it is chewing up batteries at such a rate that he is considering buying a large stock to keep in his fridge. And he doesn't use it nearly as often as I do, so he is more likely to pick it up and find it dead again.

There are reasons to spend more for a better instrument, and in this case, battery life is one of them.

You mean you read your articles to your dog or cat? :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

I do this. Take my glasses off for close work, that is.

I didn't use to have to do this. I suspect there may be bifocals in my future, someday. :(

Jim

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Reply to
jim rozen

I remember my father doing this, probably starting when he was in his fifties. He was a dot-etcher, the guy who adjusts the size of the tiny dots in four color separations for offset printing in order to get the colors right. He's in his 80s and I don't believe he wears bifocals yet.

Ned Simmons

Reply to
Ned Simmons

I used to be able to do this, I could read made in Japan on the face of my watch, but I finally had to get the bifocals. For really close stuff I have a little jewelers loupe that clamps on to my glasses.

Reply to
Roger Shoaf

On 17 Jul 2004 22:06:16 -0400, snipped-for-privacy@d-and-d.com (DoN. Nichols) calmly ranted:

I'm happy to hear that they're accurate.

-snip-

I have a 25 year-old, stainless steel, Chinese no-name which has held up to my abuse quite well. I dropped it the other day and it jumped a tooth. (Now where did I put that reset prybar for the calipers?)

That's precisely why I avoid things like that and the CoolHeat type of deal. Some times convenience is far too expensive.

The Starrett was a cheapie?!?

I don't own or keep slaves^H^H^H^H^H^Hkids or other pets, thanks.

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Reply to
Larry Jaques

Back in the dark ages of machining, the verniers were often in fractional inches. I've got a student vernier calipers that does exactly that and it is a pain in the butt to read after getting used to the much cleaner numbering of a decimal vernier.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

Reply to
Bob May

I have a Sears Craftsman #40182 that's just as you describe. Had it for years as a toolbox caliper where a digital wouldn't have lasted a week.

- Bruce

"carlDOTwest" wrote in news:L64Kc.98560$%_6.93450 @attbi_s01:

Reply to
Bruce Spainhower

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[ ... ]

Nope! I don't know why this model of Starrett has the relatively short battery life -- but still better than the $9.95 ones from the hamfest. And at least it has a very simple work-around, while those others are a pain to put away with the batteries disconnected. Some have screw-in lids, others have slide-and-hinge lids, and all leave the batteries rattling around loose. With the Starrett, it is just that

1/8" slide of the battery housing on the back -- a momentary press of the thumb as you put it away -- and another one (plus a press of the re-zero button) when you are ready to use it again.

For that matter -- the old B&S probably was not a cheapie when new -- but I got it for $15.00 from a hamfest, still in its nicely fitted wooden case. -) And it is not *it's* fault that the batteries around which it was designed were later declared an environmental hazard. :-)

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

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