Metric 'thou'?

I'd be surprised if metal working is taught to that level these days.

I'll ask one of my DT teaching colleagues tomorrow and report back.

Brian

Speaking as someone who has been doing DT/Tech for 8 years and just dropped it - we were never taught *anything* with regard to tolerances and that is up to GCSE level (14-16). Speaking with friends who are currently taking it at A-level (16-18) I have yet to see mention of it....

For those curious as to the reasons for me dropping it - I felt it was too based around Art and Design and lots of time playing around with drawings and rendering rather than actually getting your hands dirty. (And of course it is hard to get excited about a small display stand when your building submarines )

HTH,

Michael

"Dave A" schreef in bericht news:0YqdnehVQtxxEfjbnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com...

Meter, millimeter, micrometer (micron), nanometer (as in nano-technology, one of the most promising of sciences). Dirk, Netherlands

"Michael" wrote in message news:pRg9i.118$ snipped-for-privacy@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk...

From my experiences as an engineering NVQ assessor and IV, metric is the norm for all the lads, none of which seem to understand imperial, sadly !! Tolerances dont seem to enter into the younger lads minds or work. It's not until you get to the Level 3 lads who run and set CNC in the workplace. I have to say, some of my lads amaze me with the complex things they set up and machine on CNC mills. And I mean set up and program, not just call up a pre written programme from the machine's memory .

I also understand why you gave up, there is as you say, more emphasis on paperwork, dates and signatures. I am far more happier when a lad gets stuck into a job and produces something other than drawings. Having said that, I'm even more happier in my never ending loss making workshop !!! Bob

Tolerances in metric are in µ (I was tempted to write "mü"; that's how it is pronounced in German). The IT-tolerance fields at least. On drawings, it is decimal (4711 +0.009 - 0.000)

Nick

i am 17 and doing a nvq 2 (performing engineering operations at the moment and we work to +/- 0.25mm i find the metric system much better to work with for small stuff but imperial is best for anything over 2 or 3 feet cos you just end up with stupid long numbers

andy

Nick Mueller writes

Probably in the realms of fantasy Nick, for most of us! Plus three tenths of a thou, minus nothing, in fifteen foot and five inches - or there abouts.

It is a bit like the farmers gate. He went metric. He ordered the gate at 'three metres, four inches, and my thumb'.

Mike

"PG1D/PA-11Ø12" schreef in bericht news:cf2cd$4665ba20$d4bb5625$ snipped-for-privacy@news.chello.nl...

I'm surely talking to myself. In this respect I never heard about "thou-technology". What on earth is an "inch"? Dirk

I have to admit, the number in front of was a bit tooo great for that tolerance. :-)

But here, 4711 stands for "any" number (4711 being a trade mark for some eau de cologne).

Nick

What's the metric equivalent of the "tad" and "slack handful"?

M-tad and M-slack handful.

Nick

"PG1D/PA-11Ø12" skrev i en meddelelse news:82750$4665e77c$d4bb5625$ snipped-for-privacy@news.chello.nl...

A misspelled itch?

Oh, not that? So it must be this: 1 inch = 25,4 mm

Na "tadm" and "slackm handful" ;)

Thats why we have: kilometers meters centimeters millimeters micrometers nanometers Just to mention a few :-)

I suppose it must be some metric unit - after all, metric is viewed by the authorities as being "holier than thou"...

Regards, Tony

In article , Uffe Bærentsen writes

Centimetres are non-preferred units in SI; only factors of 10^3 are preferred.

Still useful though.

David

In English schools there is a strand of DT that puts the design in front of the technology and has the exam title Design Technology: Product Design. With the exam board I work with this exam comes with two streams

- 3D Design and Textiles; it is concerned with how a product looks - not how it functions. There is another strand that has the emphasis the other way round. Design and Technology: Systems and Control Technology. This puts the technology first and is concerned with how things work (pneumatics electronics structures and mechanisms).

Design and Technology: Food Technology is the third member of the suite.

I am principal moderator for 'A' level SCT and am in the middle of the exam season just now.

Yesterday I was in a school looking at a project where the student had set himself (they are usually male but not exclusively) the task of measuring the speed of rotation of a shaft. He had built a test rig of a nicely turned shaft mounted in bearings that he had specified and sourced. All made to tolerance which are detailed in his design folder. No CNC work either - manual lathe and miller. The bulk of his work was obviously the electronics involved in measuring each rotation but he did understand and had worked to tolerances. Another centre had a young lady who had prototyped a system to monitor the pitch of a planes propeller. She had modeled the pitch mechanism complete with a 600mm diameter prop. Very fine work in more than one sense.

These were unusual on two fronts - the vast majority of the work I see is purely electronic as opposed to electro-mechanical or pure mechanically based and the Product Design exam has roughly ten times as many entries as us. Food outnumbers us about three to one.

At exam time DT teachers have the freedom to go down the ?design? or the ?technology? path. For the less technically minded teacher whose Head is demanding exam successes the Product Design route is very appealing. Working to a tolerance does not figure very highly when your primary materials are card, MDF and acrylic.

In my experience tolerances would be most likely to be taught in a school taking the ?technology? route and would probably be in association with electronic component values e.g. resistors.

I don?t know enough about vocational courses, particularly Post 16, to comment ? but I do know the local Tech. still has a suite of lathes and milling machines that get well used - but the department is a shadow of it?s former self.

To answer the original post - exclusively metric measurements (there's a long battle with Maths and Science - in my school DT used mm. while they insisted on teaching cm.) and hundredths would be demonstrated but rarely used. I liked to get a micrometer out and show a class that we could easily measure the diameter of a human hair or the thickness of a piece of paper. ?Awesome? was heard during one such demonstration.

?Its education Jim but not as we know it.?

John B

"Uffe Bærentsen" schreef in bericht news:46668ca0$0$52106$ snipped-for-privacy@dread11.news.tele.dk...

LOL. Then a "thou" must be 0,0254 mm. Why should this be "clearly a usefull unit", I wonder ;-) Dirk

I'm sure that RCH's are obtainable in Hamburg. :-)

Mark Rand RTFM