That's what I say about my dial calipers to a friend of mine who loves his digital calipers because he doesn't have to look at the rule and then the dial to try and figure out what the measurement is.
A while back when I was doing some work for him, I asked him to measure the diameter of a knob. He couldn't. His battery was dead.
se
If you don't have a good idea what the measurement or the calculation result will be you will probably end up with a major mistake. Direct reading creates overconfidence in its output. Most resistor values I can do in my head. The slide rule is good for relatively close tolerance and simulations for tuning 1% or better resistors etc. But if you don't know where you are going you should do some homework first. . .
Iaudio,
I'm with you on the old style manual read calipers and all my mikes, from 1" to 12". Starrett and Mititoyo. How do you ever know when one of those digital veneers are giving you a false value, they do sometimes skip a couple of teeth and then everything is a mess. My tool and die makers that I supervised weren't allowed to use anything that wasn't checked for calibration at least once a year. Even oiur granite tables had to be inspected for flatness every year I think. I still have a 4' x 8' granite table in storage for those large patterns that I've done in the past. I'm thinking of going back to the local college that has a great machinist program and learn MasterCam to get away from having to do everything with a manual mill. Ain't life fun....... I need to cut some new tooling to make elliptical cones for some new speakers I'm working on. Not something that would be easy with a manual mill by hand though I have done things like that in the past.
I'm with you on the old style manual read calipers and all my mikes, from 1" to 12". Starrett and Mititoyo. How do you ever know when one of those digital veneers are giving you a false value, they do sometimes skip a couple of teeth and then everything is a mess. My tool and die makers that I supervised weren't allowed to use anything that wasn't checked for calibration at least once a year. Even oiur granite tables had to be inspected for flatness every year I think. I still have a 4' x 8' granite table in storage for those large patterns that I've done in the past. I'm thinking of going back to the local college that has a great machinist program and learn MasterCam to get away from having to do everything with a manual mill. Ain't life fun....... I need to cut some new tooling to make elliptical cones for some new speakers I'm working on. Not something that would be easy with a manual mill by hand though I have done things like that in the past.
This reminds me of when I was working as a labourer in sewer and water construction, transforming beautiful Alberta farmland into ugly subdivisions ("housing estates" for those of you from across the pond). The pipe-layer on our crew was a grizzled veteran, probably never graduated high-school, but could lay pipe at a consistent grade all day long. Apparently the conversion to metric tape measures was still a new thing for him, so he would measure how long a piece of pipe he needed and call out a number. But he didn't know the units, so we needed him to hold up his hands to show us how big so we didn't cut something the wrong size. If his metric tape measure said 1m 31cm he would just say "31" because that was the number on the tape. Nothing like throwing away the MSD.
RPN - reverse polish notation
As Lazarus Long said "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house".
jan
R vs I
Even worse, I do make messes in the house
George
Irish Notation...
.
The 4 stack register was a delight once one learned how to use it, much better/cooler than those stupid Casio things with the parenthesis buttons that everybody else had.
Dan.
Memories...I had one of these at school...my part time job paid for it.My first and, I think, only "physical" calculator Graduation present from my father when I completed high school and was accepted into university.
.The 4 stack register was a delight once one learned how to use it, much better/cooler than those stupid Casio things with the parenthesis buttons that everybody else had.
Dan.
Units Confusion...
Dan.
CNN - NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss - September 30, 1999
But he didn't know the units, so we needed him to hold up his hands to show us how big so we didn't cut something the wrong size. If his metric tape measure said 1m 31cm he would just say "31" because that was the number on the tape. Nothing like throwing away the MSD.
EEdiots.
Pfffft !.
Dan.
CNN - NASA's metric confusion caused Mars orbiter loss - September 30, 1999
Last edited:
Not as unlikely as it seems. During my editing work for Linear Audio I always ask authors if they can supply their graphs as a data table or Exel file, that way I can use my own publishing graphing software to make pub quality graphs.
At one time I struggled for more than an hour because the data looked good but the graph had hardly any resemblence to the original.
Then I found out that the data table was in an Exel version set up with '.' as the decimal separator, ',' as the 1000's separator.
My Dutch language Exel uses the ',' as the decimal separator, and the '.' as the 1000's separator....
I reset my Exel version to US settings, and have had no more issues since then.
jan
At one time I struggled for more than an hour because the data looked good but the graph had hardly any resemblence to the original.
Then I found out that the data table was in an Exel version set up with '.' as the decimal separator, ',' as the 1000's separator.
My Dutch language Exel uses the ',' as the decimal separator, and the '.' as the 1000's separator....
I reset my Exel version to US settings, and have had no more issues since then.
jan
The Weights and Measures of Act of 1824....
Yeah, only the Poms could invent such a convoluted system as the 'British Imperial' system.....thou, inch, foot, yard, chain, furlong, mile, league, fathom, cable, nautical mile, link, rod, pole, perch...phew and that's just the length units, let alone weights, area and volume units.
In early junior school we learned the above system, and then it was announced that Australia was going metric....even at the tender age of eight I recognised that metric was far more sensible than that English nonsense.
Of course, nowadays I use both perfectly interchangeably except for fuel mileage and tyre pressures....mpg (miles per imperial gallon, not US gallon ffs) still makes more sense to me somehow.
Dan.
Imperial units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yeah, only the Poms could invent such a convoluted system as the 'British Imperial' system.....thou, inch, foot, yard, chain, furlong, mile, league, fathom, cable, nautical mile, link, rod, pole, perch...phew and that's just the length units, let alone weights, area and volume units.
In early junior school we learned the above system, and then it was announced that Australia was going metric....even at the tender age of eight I recognised that metric was far more sensible than that English nonsense.
Of course, nowadays I use both perfectly interchangeably except for fuel mileage and tyre pressures....mpg (miles per imperial gallon, not US gallon ffs) still makes more sense to me somehow.
Dan.
Imperial units - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Last edited:
)
We damned Yanks still use that old imperial measurement system all the time and it still comes easy to us, but at the same time I convert back and forth all the time with no problem. I just sent a set of Solidworks files to both Germany and China and of course before I sent them I changed all the units to metric value! The numbers just look stupid to me though, some rather weird numbers that look so much simpler in English standard. I still prefer to use the 1000th's of an inch scale when machining than to use mm, as the scale is finer to me at least.
The DIM bearing axle of my oldy turntable (Verdier copycat) is 1 micron accurate.
(some folks do ton displacement, gross and net ton volume, think in ton fuel instead of tanking liters or gallons at the gas station. Plus have to keep specific gravity in mind, for different grades and temperature)
Irritating is have two full sets of car tools in the garage, and having to check which side the gas filler cap is every single time at the gas station.
(some folks do ton displacement, gross and net ton volume, think in ton fuel instead of tanking liters or gallons at the gas station. Plus have to keep specific gravity in mind, for different grades and temperature)
Irritating is have two full sets of car tools in the garage, and having to check which side the gas filler cap is every single time at the gas station.
Last edited:
sure, I use them both when needed, I still think its whack… 1/1000ths of an inch is surely an imperial/metric bastardisation? you do have a choice to use something smaller than a mm if you need finer scale, micrometer aka µm for example
Given the computer is just going to be converting it for you I dont get it, but its what you are used to I guess. of course it looks stupid converted to metric when youve designed it in imperial haha, seen how neatly they convert? not. how would you write for example 1 mile 133' 5 1/4" ? convert to feet/inches?
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.