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Olderisbetter
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I use a mix of old and new, i often mix them all and end up with a bit of timber 4 ft 3 cm and 2 lira long, then i hammer it in with a 1lb 100 gram whacking stick
redlig
Member
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- wiltshire uk
Always fun on the lathe using a metric Vernier and imperial dials on the lathe . keeps the mind active and the scrap rate up.
zzr1200
Working at 650 ft on open steel work.
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- Glapwell, Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK
They're called "Thousands of an inch" or 0.000" tis simple....
Kayos
Gone......
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- Yorkshire
Definitely engineers. I do have final say on the designs so I've given them an extra week before we review them
Mr Fro
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- Bury st Edmunds-ish
One of my big long standing clients is European and a few years back they opened a facility in the usa.
The USA site is big and filled with our machinery but Americans being Americans, they decided they knew best and started modifying some bits of kit to "work better" despite it being already very efficient.
Needless to say, within short order they started to complain that things weren't working properly so I had them send some bits over for me to check.
I had a call with them and told them I'd found the tolerances on the modified kit were awful. "Oh, it's fine" says one of their engineers, "We added an inch to it".
The client sent on of their European engineers over to the USA to have a look and he took loads of pictures and videos of the equipment and how they use it. To say it was a bit slapdash and shonky would be very kind indeed!
The USA site is big and filled with our machinery but Americans being Americans, they decided they knew best and started modifying some bits of kit to "work better" despite it being already very efficient.
Needless to say, within short order they started to complain that things weren't working properly so I had them send some bits over for me to check.
I had a call with them and told them I'd found the tolerances on the modified kit were awful. "Oh, it's fine" says one of their engineers, "We added an inch to it".
The client sent on of their European engineers over to the USA to have a look and he took loads of pictures and videos of the equipment and how they use it. To say it was a bit slapdash and shonky would be very kind indeed!
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On the flip side we had a fitter join the company after he had spent 30 years working for Goodyear Tyres in Wolverhampton, he didn't own any metric tools as all the kit came in from the US so was imperial (or standard as they call it)
Dr.Al
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- Gloucestershire, UK
Long live DRO`s and venereal clappers that can switch between the two
... and longer live ones that only read metric so you can't accidentally press the in/mm button and end up in retard units:
I modified a cheap digital caliper to act as a depth gauge thing on the tailstock of my lathe and it's amazing how many times I've turned it on and found it displaying inches. I've seriously considered supergluing the in/mm button so it can't be pressed, but I'm worried that it might glitch into imperial and I then wouldn't be able to get it back into sensible units.
Bravheart
"Tomorrow will be a good day"captain Tom1920-2021
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On a golf outing a number of years ago there was a nearest the pin on a par three. Anyhow one lucky shot later my playing partner says that's worth a measure and gets the tape out. Now I forget the actual numbers but he measures it along the lines 2 yards 4 feet and 10 centimeters. And he's a builder.
And he's a builder.
8ob
Member
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- Nescient in the vale
Imperial measurements will be with us for a very long time yet, all our tyres come in an imperial diameter and metric width, 8x4 is a recognised sheet size and nobody ever asks for the metric version, we still use miles, bps pipe sizes will be around for ever and most of us know what a pint or gallon mean.
Bob
Not so much just the fluency part, but knowing how to convert between the 2. The rule of 254. i.e. 25.4mm to an inch. Or divide 1000 though by 25.4 is about 39 so 39 thou to a mm. Ish.
Easy for those who are aged about 50 to 60 as they were at school during the changeover in teaching. Even my wife who is 6 years younger than me can't do imperial, but that's no bad thing. Everything nowadays is metric as long as you're outside the USA. Except I recall the railway system still uses miles, chains, yards etc. Oh and the standard track gauge is 4' 8 1/2" Lord only knows where 4 foot eight and a half came from though
What made me laugh a few weeks back was a news article in the US where someone had a hole appear in their floor. The article described it as being "Large enough to fit a washing machine". The first comment was "Americans will do anything to avoid using the metric measuring system"
The one which does rather grate though is when someone describes something imperial as a decimal notation. i.e. 6.5 inches. When did imperial ever use tenths of anything? Halves, quarters, eighths, sixteenths etc but never tenths.
Dr.Al
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All of that is true, but it doesn't make it a good thing. If America ever sees the light and migrates to metric (which is unlikely I know), imperial will die pretty quickly I think. I can use imperial units, I just choose not to most of the time because I haven't found many redeeming features. I've seen too many problems caused by engineering drawings mixing up fractional inches, decimal inches and drill numbers/letters (where the metric system would just use millimetres without any possibility of confusion).
Oh and of course, "most of us know what a pint or gallon means", but if you talk to an American they'll say (assuming they're enlightened enough to know some metric) that a pint is 473 ml whereas you or I would say it's 568 ml.
Morris
Member
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- Northamptonshire.
I don't mind working in either, started my apprenticeship in 1970 so had to deal with both at work but tech was metric.
Like others it's cm that get me. I was taught they were not part of the S.I. system and have also tried to send unfeasibly large parcels via Parcel monkey.
Like others it's cm that get me. I was taught they were not part of the S.I. system and have also tried to send unfeasibly large parcels via Parcel monkey.
rtcosic
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... Except I recall the railway system still uses miles, chains, yards etc. Oh and the standard track gauge is 4' 8 1/2" Lord only knows where 4 foot eight and a half came from though
...
Everybody knows that.
It's the width of two Roman Horses' Backsides.
The ruts in the Roman roads from the wheels were that far apart as that was needed for the shafts attached to the two horses pulling them.
When horse-drawn tramways were built the engineers uses the 'standard' (Roman) sizes.
When tramways become railways guess what the engineers used as the 'standard'.
Edit: I used to have a sign on my desk that read:
Myths Perpetuated Here.
Munkul
Jack of some trades, Master of none
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- Cumbria
this.
I'll still avoid banana units wherever possible though.
I read that years ago but the guys at OW Railways where I worked said it was just a myth. Was very funny at the time.
Maker
Most folk just call me; Orange Joe
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Inches are good for day to day, normal-person measurements, maybe even better than metric, because they're just the right size for a single digit to describe, with reasonable accuracy, most things you encounter in a day. Lots of things the average person handles, or would need to know the size of, are in the range of 1-10 inches, millimetres are too small and meters are too big for single digits to be useful, this is why children are taught centimetres, because the size of most things, in centimetres (and in inches) is easy to comprehend. I'm sure there's a word for it but I can't think of it right now, not "tangible" but something like that.
For example, "Three inches" is 3 syllables so it's easy to say, and accurately describes something as between 2.5" and 3.5", which is enough precision for "Will this vase fit on that shelf?. You can hold a tape somewhere near an object and call out its size in inches, using millimetres you have to be more careful because they're so small, too small for them to matter to most people. In metric you'd say "Seventy five millimetres", that's eight syllables and technically means between 74.5 and 75.5mm, so it would be more accurate to say "About seventy five millimetres" and if anything it's more ambiguous as no one knows what rounding interval you've used (But would probably assume 25mm so you're basically using inches by a different name).
Of course if precision does matter, that argument goes out the window and it doesn't make a lot of difference what you use as long as you're comfortable with it. I machine in decimal inches because that's what my leadscrews are, I could produce the exact same parts on a metric lathe just as easily.
For anything more technical than simple lengths, using imperial units is a massive pain, especially if electricity is involved as there are no imperial units.
For example, "Three inches" is 3 syllables so it's easy to say, and accurately describes something as between 2.5" and 3.5", which is enough precision for "Will this vase fit on that shelf?. You can hold a tape somewhere near an object and call out its size in inches, using millimetres you have to be more careful because they're so small, too small for them to matter to most people. In metric you'd say "Seventy five millimetres", that's eight syllables and technically means between 74.5 and 75.5mm, so it would be more accurate to say "About seventy five millimetres" and if anything it's more ambiguous as no one knows what rounding interval you've used (But would probably assume 25mm so you're basically using inches by a different name).
Of course if precision does matter, that argument goes out the window and it doesn't make a lot of difference what you use as long as you're comfortable with it. I machine in decimal inches because that's what my leadscrews are, I could produce the exact same parts on a metric lathe just as easily.
For anything more technical than simple lengths, using imperial units is a massive pain, especially if electricity is involved as there are no imperial units.
ajlelectronics
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- Gloucester, England
Not the case at all. The whole point of real measurements is that they are/were directly related to a real object. It is easy to visualise someone who is 6'6" and 15 Stone, but utterly meaningless if they are 2.3m and 150Kg. Both systems have their uses, it is a shame that the educational system in this country has dumbed down so that people know so little about the world around them.
