Failing to find the old vernier caliper I decided to order decent internal external digital caliper. Not wanting to wind up with junk I did a bit of research and found mostly good opinions about the iGaging IP54 0-6” ez cal caliper. I couldn’t justify buying a Mitutoyo or Starrett and at $24.95 shipped the IP54 seemed a good choice. The package was shipped yesterday and will be delivered tomorrow. I will search for the micrometers I have here somewhere and compare their measurement readings to the iGaging caliper and post a review in the near future.
This made me wonder what other forum members use to take measurements when fabricating parts. Calipers or micrometers? Preferred brand? Reasons? Recommended sources or deals? Reasonably priced calibration options?
The iGaging IP54 0-6” ez cal caliper certainly gets good reviews.
I haven’t used a micrometer for a number of year’s as I just use a digital vernier for all sorts of project’s including making stuff on the lathe at home. I can’t remember the make but it’s a decent one that I got secondhand on ebay.
I wouldn’t say that there’s any need to get them calibrated for use at home unless you had to ensure that your measurements were very accurate.
Accuracy is less important than repeatability, especially if you are making a part to fit another part you have right in front of you. Accuracy starts to matter when you're making a part that has to fit something you've never held in your own hands, like someone sends you just a set of dimensions to work from. Your measuring tool has to put out the same numbers as their measuring tool.
I use the cheap ~$10 Harbor Freight digital calipers for about everything. I do have a decent set of 0.011-0.060" pin gages I use occasionally to check they're still OK at various different sizes, never found a problem though. I have ultra-cheap plastic digital 'tyre tread depth' gages, again, they are repeatable, not necessarily accurate. If I take the same measurement 5 times and it comes out to within 0.0005" every time, I tend to trust it. The parts I make fit where they are supposed to with no surprises, so I guess that means it's working.
Even though the calipers are stainless, they are not non-magnetic. That can be a real pain in the ass if you work with ferrous metals, it's easy to overlook a little metal dingleberry stuck to the jaws that will throw everything off. Wipe the jaws clean, check the zero setting, keep checking and wiping the jaws until it goes exactly to 0.0000 4 or 5 times in a row. Then you're probably good to go. The way you close the jaws (either to check zero or to measure your part) will affect the reading. Snapping them closed will give you a lower reading than if you gently close up on it. You have to be consistent to get a consistent reading, and that's true for even expensive tools.
For stuff on the lathe & mill, I have a really cheap 0-1" dial indicator, a mid-priced 0.0005" test indicator, and a ridiculously expensive Mitutoyo 0.0001" test indicator. As the dimensions get smaller, the quality matters more. I also have ridiculously expensive Noga indicator holders. An expensive indicator in a crappy holder will give crappy readings, a cheap indicator in a good holder can give surprisingly good readings.
A cheap set of calipers should be something everyone’s got in their tool box. Sometimes you just need to know or be able to convey the size of something to an exactitude in order to get things to work together properly. Measurement is an important part of most projects.
Digital’s are nice because you can rezero them (for example to simplify the math when finding the difference in size between two things) and switch between metric and inches. Also digitals don’t have that little gear rack in them like dial calipers do, which can get sand and grime in it and lead to bad readings from “skipped teeth” or become damaged.
Most people shouldn’t have a need for more accuracy than a caliper provides; calipers being good to .001” -.002” or so. They can be had for ~$15.
Preferred brands, as a professional machinist, are Mitutoyo for anything digital. I use some Brown and Sharpe stuff and Starrett non-digital stuff as well. Fowler is hit and miss, with some stuff being Chinese made at a huge markup. Other good brands include Tesa (thread mics), Interapid and Brown and Sharpe “bestest” for drop and dial indicators; Compaq is good too. For shop gage blocks, the $~90 81 piece Fowler set from Enco is a good buy. Vermont Gage for gage pins.
I have a HF vernier in the work truck and a cheap dial caliper sans glass in the desk. Good enough for what I do. Stored away are the micrometers, dial gauges, snap gauges etc. A cheap but decent tool used consistently will out-do a great tool used inconsistently.
I picked up a few of these awhile back. I’ve read the cheap ones devour batteries, so I hit up ebay and bought a package of 100 for ~$10. Still, I generally pop the battery out to keep them from dying.
They are plastic, but seem to be accurate enough for anything I do, which is generally just measuring parts, o-rings and stuff. The only downside of the plastic that I’ve found is you can’t scribe lines in stuff. There is also no way to lock it in a measurement, which makes scribing even harder. The metal kinds usually have a thumb screw to lock it down. I was still able to pull it off on the part I was building using wet spraypaint and a firm grip keeping it from sliding.
You can get stainless digital calipers that read to 0.0005" for less than $20 even when they're not on sale (Harbor Freight, pretty regularly go on sale for $10). The glass-filled nylon - er, sorry, carbon fiber - ones only read to 0.01", completely useless because of that alone, even without the other issues you mentioned.
I considered several priced less than $20 including the ones harbor freight had. Many of these had reviews commenting on zeroing problems, rough movement, tool marks, and repeatability problems. The price paid for the iGaging including shipping compares to the cost of the one harbor freight has for $19.99 plus tax and the gas used to get there and back.
Sorry, that was a reply to Aardvark Spleen at #7, I should have included a quote. The plastic calipers aren't good value for money even if they are free. iGaging is quality stuff - I have one of their AngleCubes, it's neat (I think it was ~$25 on sale from Grizzly).
Another thing about Harbor Freight - they have three different SKUs for digital calipers. The version that's regular $19.99, big 'PITTSBURGH' printed on the end, is good (#68304). The other two slightly cheaper models, I don't know. They may very well be total crap.
Mine are not rough, or notchy, or inconsistent. I use them every day and in two years, I think they are now on just their third LR44 battery.
Good to know. It took a lot of searching and reading reviews before I made my purchase so I started this thread hoping for comments and recommendations that could be referenced by forum members who find a need for calipers or micrometers to help avoid low quality, poorly made, inaccurate, and unreliable products.
