Metric/imperial

D Murphy wrote in news:Xns993B915CD5D6DBW12BU20MU38SY@130.133.1.4:

Actually, we would be metric. As a global company, it would be a nightmare to collaborate within the company if one was using imperial. Being european parented just absolutely ensures that we would be metric.

The thread standards are different... JIS, DIN SAE

John

The only acceptable argument. No kidding! OTOH, why make live harder then necessary?

Nick

Not to forget the 3 1/2" disks that aren't imperial at all, but 90mm.

Nick

Um... I find that as well as metric, AF and BS, I also need to have sets of BA sockets, spanners and box wrenches in order to maintain things.

Hey, did you know that if you make a bush with an inner thread of 26tpi and an outer thread of 1mm, you can end up with a differential screw that gives you

Mark Rand RTFM

Need some historic lessons? It initaly was *not* tied to the metric system. It was the thickness of someones thump (after having sex, in the morning, how many ale/beer?). The conversion was initially 24.39997xxx mm. That changed around the 70's. Then it was defined to be exactly 25.4mm.

It is, no doubt. But there is just *one* unit.

That doesn't matter. The difference is, that the reference was not to some person -moi le roi- but something that seemed to be quite reproducable at that time. Their decision was to select something that was more "democratic" than the former definitions. The length itself just had to be somehow handy.

Wrong. The initial meter was the one in Paris. They invested a lot of time and effort to find a stable alloy. Lots of investigation and the highest obtainable accuracy at that time.

They knew that, and used the reference as little as possible. They developed the alloy for that purpose.

That strange number is a stable reference, to the knowledge of our time. They couldn't count waves at that time.

That happened later. There was a time when we here in Bavaria (Germany) had our own inch that was just a tad off the imperial inch.

What!?

Does it have to be? Do seconds have to be "human"? Like Volts, Amperes, Pasqual, Liters, Kilograms... ?

Just because you are using a fractional system. I can well live with the metric system and "limited" fractions. I don't need 1/3 of a meter. And if, I pick 300mm or 350mm. That doesn't hurt me at all.

You are mixing things. One foot is how many inches? That question doesn't exist in the metric system.

Nobody said that! And if, he must be stupid.

Oh. Now that is an argument. You don't have to change? How well would you sell cars to the rest of the world (see wikipedia for the remaining countries, but don't get shocked) when they still would use imperial screws?

Your last reality check was when?

Here it is again. Do you think that any European manufacturer is making goods just for the US-market in the imperial system? LOL!!! You really got to wake up.

So why do you insist on being one of the last, and absolutely the last one of the "civilized nations"?

Nick

And now we are all going to switch to Spanish as the official language of the world since it is a lot easier to learn and you don't have to deal with all that crap of tenses.

John

Given the state of things in the world today, and for the next 100 plus years while the legacy systems and parts are still going to be in the system, it might be quite worthwhile to teach in mixed units.

Anyone today that thinks they can live entirely in one system is only fooling themselves.

The imperial measuring system is full of legacy measures that were particular and appropriate to various functions, while the metric system has fewer base systems, and more subdivisions thereof. It is what it is.

Anyone that can learn to cut metal in the first place has the ability to learn any measuring system that they have to, including how to switch at will between systems.

Guys that shut off their brains to prevent themselves from learning new skills are already half dead. They might at least dig their own hole to be buried in. :-)

With the ready availability of both pocket calculators, and digital tooling that does both imperial and metric measuring, the students might just as well become adapted to the idea that they are living in a world full of different systems of measuring.

Chevrolets are metric! :-P

Cheers Trevor Jones

No, they are 9/10 a centimeter.

John

Mark I forgot BA,my neighbour does small steam locos and has BA, Whitworth (he used to have Morgans), metric and inch sockets and spanners. Now oddity, the guys that spec'd BA did it in metric or at least inch metric so foreseeing metrication by 100+ years, based on the Swiss Thury thread IIRC.

Cheers

Dave

Harder? Switching to metric would be harder and unnecessary at 54. I use it where I need it and ignore it where I don't.

So how many cars are produced in the US these days are using inch fasteners?. A mate who has a big hangup on this and British industrial, particularly automotive, decline because it didn't metricate and was hampered by selling a product with inch fasteners or at least inch hex fasteners into a metric market. Some specialty markets can get away with it, IIRC the big Renault with the Mack engine, cost of a socket set is cheap by comparison.

It depends on the product. No one seemed to have a problem with our $20,000 to $80,000 telemetry radios, and they were NOT built with metric hardware. The European Space Agency had no problems with our products. They spent millions on two earth stations built without metric hardware in the electronics.

On Fri, 25 May 2007 18:45:31 -0400, with neither quill nor qualm, John quickly quoth:

Nah, we'll all be speaking Chinese soon enough, prolly Mandarin. The Science Fiction writers can't be wrong, can they?

- Metaphors Be With You -

"> What is the metric system? Most bearings are metric. If you are

That was true in the 1960s and early 1970s. Now all countries use the SI standard. By 1980 when I started working as a motorcycle mechanic-salesman-partsman, only older bikes had this problem.

Steve R.

Nick Mueller wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@yadro.de:

Actually no i don't need a history lesson. But I wasn't talking history in this case. I was merely pointing out that the standard "inch" is in fact tied to the the standard meter.

Obviously.

How do you figure I'm wrong? I was being a little tongue-in-cheek but trust me I know what a gage block is, I know why they chose platinum irridium, and I also know why it's a very poor idea to use a mechanical device as the standard for length for all other mechanical measuring devices.

Or are you picking nits with the term "later"? The length was defined first, then the master reference (Platinum Irridium gage block) was produced after. In English, that would be considered "later".

Didn't make the problem go away, hence the change coming below...

Well, that was the whole problem with the early industrial revolution. Interchangability. Hence the drive for standardization.

'Tis true. Not nearly enough sizes and pitches for us finicky Yankee bastards.

It doesn't have to be. I'm just pointing out that it isn't. I find it fairly easy to pace off something in fett, since I came equipped with two of them.

Sure it does. Hence the prefixes deci, centi, milli, etc...

So you haven't met Cliff?

Hmph, the rest of the world seems to have no problem selling us imperial fasteners. They mark their exported food packages in ounces, pounds, etc.. But somehow we are too stupid to figure out their system? Yeah, right.

Feel free to support your bias with some actual numbers. Here's a little help, we exported over $1 trillion dollars worth of goods last year. Let me know which country exported more than that.

What makes you think that I think that? Sheesh. But if you want to sell products here in the largest consumer market in the world, then you will need to abide by the consumers demands, as well as relevent laws.

Oh and by the by, the last time I checked the speedometer in a BMW, Mercedes, or Volkswagon sold here, it was graduated in miles per hour. So while I don't think that Europeans are making goods "just" for the US market, they do need to adapt them to be able to sell them here.

I've also noticed that Sandvik, Kyocera, Mitsubishi, Iscar, etc.. sell carbide inserts that are in "inch" dimensions, even in their own countries. The tool shanks sold here. 3/8", 1/2", 5/8", 3/4", 1" are all available from manufacturers located in "metric" counties.

Nobody is "insisting" on anything. As I pointed out there really isn't a huge impetus for change here. Foreigners that want access to our market need to make some adjustments, just as we adjust to theirs when need be. Seriously , if the US had lagged in indusrialization rather than being one of the leaders it would be a different story. Since that wasn't the case, and we were the only undamaged country after WWII, we just cranked out the stuff the world wanted, cars, steel, medicine, machinery, etc.. We didn't need to worry about competing with Europe, we were selling her the stuff with which to rebuild and join in on the trade.

The problem is some fools beleive that that brief moment in time is how the US should remain. That is, the only manufacturer to the world. That we should never have competition, nor we should never lose a single job to a foreign country. That we should not have to compete nor should we ever lose. Then there are the idiots on your side of the pond that look at every loss as evidence the US is finished. Ignoring the reality that for every industry and job lost, better ones have filled the gap.

All of this competition has resulted in the average man in an industrialized nation living a lifestyle that was unobtainable to the wealthiest monarchs a mere 150 years ago. And we are paying WalMart prices for it.

Things could be a whole lot worse.

Heh heh! The joke in Canada, in the 1980s, was that the government offered a rebate on Imperial, and SAE tools if they were replaced with metric.Of course, mechanics still needed the BA, BS/Whitworth, and SAE tools for both older vehicles, and current ones like Harley Davidsons. Many mechanics took advantage of the program by scrounging up old worn out tools to trade in for the rebate. Clearly, the politicians, and civil service mandarins, didn't have a clue!

Steve R.

Indeed! I have BA, British Standard / Whitworth, Metric, and SAE in open end, and box end wrenches. Socket wrenches are in 1/4", 3/8", 1/2", and 3/4" drive, standard and deep sockets, in metric, BA, Whit., metric, and SAE. Whew! All metrication did, was force me to buy more tools! The old standards didn't go away! They just added another one.

Steve R.

You mean "thumb"?

Well ... that depends. From the 43rd edition (1961-62) of the _Handbook of Chemistry and Physics_ by the Chemical Rubber Publishing Company,

For the US: 1 inch = 25.40005 mm For England: 1 inch = 25.39998 mm For France: 1 inch*= 27.0700 mm (called the "Ponce")

IIRC, I found the "new" definition in the 44th edition (1962-63), so it was apparently a bit before the 70s. :-)

And looking at the three different sizes of the "inch" between the three countries covered by the tables, that unification was a significant benefit of the metric system -- even when the residents do not directly use the metric units. I presume that the French Ponce was already obsolete at the time of publication, but the differing British and US inches *were* certainly in use.

At that time, it was the scientific community which used the metric system.

And a length unit based on the reach of a typical arm was more handy than the somewhat longer meter for those who did not have measuring tools handy at all times.

I have to agree -- the additional complexity of a threading dial on a metric lathe is one example. The lack of a number of intermediate sizes in screw diameters is another. It is easier to scale the screws to the task with number-sized screws (which granted are mostly not reasonable fractions of inches, so they could just as well be specified in mm -- but the corresponding thread pitches do happen to be purely fractional inch sizes.

But the ability to get an approximate length by extending one hand to the side while holding the other end near ones nose is a benefit when serious precision is not called for.

Some of the finer pitches in metric screws are not exactly logical sizes -- 0.45mm on a 2.5mm screw, IIRC serves as an example.

Of course 0.01mm offers somewhat more resolution than 0.001". But most of the metric mechanical micrometers which I have stop at

Enjoy, DoN.