Inexpensive calipers

I bought a set of real cheep digital calipers once, whoops , their now in the scrap metal bin.

eratic readings and that sort of thing was very common.

i have mitatoyo digital "dial" indicator that has a very stable reading also ive acidentaly left it on for a few days and the batteries didnt go flat (still the same ones) so very energy efficiant compaired to the cheep calipers that ate bateries.

Stuart
 
The 50 year old Craftsman dial unit developed a bad rack tooth. I bought HF $9 Pittsburg and it is the go to for daily use. I believe that Craftsman cost over $50 . A few Chinese tools seem classics in terms of value . So far this caliper is one, the little free falshlights are another.
 
I would never use a set of calipers for anything less then .005. Going cheap on DIAL calipers is fine. But with digital, I would go with Fowler or mitotuyo. For an 8" they run around 220.00
 
I have a set of the higher end iGaging digital calipers, plus a couple of sets of cheap dial calipers and they all work great for 95% of what I do. When I get to the other 5%, the micrometers come out to play.
 
At work I have a good mitutoyo which I use for checking parts and a harbor freight I use to check everything else pretty much. I get the same measurements from both but if there was something wrong with the parts I would never hear the end of it if I was using the harbor freight to check them. I bought the harbor freight one just to minimize wear on my good ones measuring stock,parallels etc. And if I drop them it's only ten dollars. At home I just use a pair of harbor freight. I have a silver set and a black set from harbor freight the black pair says it has a lifetime warranty on the box the silver does not. The silver pair remembers where it was left and turns on automatically the black don't. The only thing I don't like about the silver pair is they use a large number on the display for the tenths and smaller numbers after that. It's not really a problem but it just seems wrong.
 
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