# Buyer Beware: The $10 Digital Caliper



## gr8legs (Aug 13, 2020)

Whilst getting a couple of extra 'throwaway when they go bad" plastic digital calipers to scatter around the shop I didn't read the specifications very carefully before getting these.

I mean really, I expect every digital caliper to resolve down to 0.001 inches. We live in a world of thousandths after all, right?

WRONG!

These are perfectly nice calipers available from many sellers on the 'Bay but only indicate to 0.01 inches. Hundredths.

My bad for not reading the specs - which were completely accurate - nor looking carefully at the pictures. My bad again.

Buyer beware - there are $10 calipers that DO read to 0.001 - just not these.

Stu


----------



## MrCrankyface (Aug 13, 2020)

I've done the exact same thing, saw the price and instantly ordered 5 of them only to realize the only measure 0.1mm(4 thou) which is useless for machining.


----------



## ericc (Aug 13, 2020)

I can't tell.  Are the jaws plastic?  They might be useful around the blacksmith shop.  I have a set of General calipers good to 1/128".  Actually, I don't trust them even for that.  But they are fine for measuring hot stuff.


----------



## MrCrankyface (Aug 13, 2020)

The ones I bought, that looked the exact same but metric, were some kind of grainy plastic. Didn't feel or look like regular ABS/PP.


----------



## gr8legs (Aug 13, 2020)

ericc said:


> I can't tell. Are the jaws plastic? They might be useful around the blacksmith shop. I have a set of General calipers good to 1/128". Actually, I don't trust them even for that. But they are fine for measuring hot stuff.



Yes, all plastic. Probably not good for hot stuff. The General ones are OK (if metal) but 1/128 isn't particularly useful. I like (now that I have found them) 1/64" because they correspond to common fractional drill sizes. Makes sorting a grab bag easier 



MrCrankyface said:


> The ones I bought, that looked the exact same but metric, were some kind of grainy plastic. Didn't feel or look like regular ABS/PP.



These also switch Imperial / Metric but not fractional.


----------



## Ken from ontario (Aug 13, 2020)

I had a couple of them but my reason for buying was for their plastic body/frame. they were easy to cut to shorter length to use on my tailstock for measuring depth of cut. unfortunately soon after I installed one I realized I needed to measure more accurately than 0.01" so I removed it and never looked at it again, total waste of money.


----------



## Reddinr (Aug 13, 2020)

I feel your pain.  I bought a cheap digital caliper at a local HW store, against my better judgement.  Reads to 1/1000's but the repeatability is as-if it had one less decimal place.  It just feels sloppy too.  I use that one for some general wood working as it has fractional readout.   But for metal I'm sticking with Mitutoyo from here on out.  Worth every penny in my book.


----------



## Karl_T (Aug 13, 2020)

Ya gets what ya pays for. A $100 Mitutoyo or Fowler reads almost as good as a micrometer. A $10 horrible fright - not so much.


----------



## gr8legs (Aug 13, 2020)

Karl_T said:


> Ya gets what ya pays for. A $100 Mitutoyo or Fowler reads almost as good as a micrometer. A $10 horrible fright - not so much.



Yep, I agree completely - but for the quick and dirty stuff where I'm in a black hole or loaning out a tool the cheapies have their place.

Less crying / screaming when one gets bent / broken / lost.

"Never loan out a good tool." - me

Stu


----------



## Papa Charlie (Aug 13, 2020)

I think we have all made those quick purchases only to find out that we didn't look close enough. I have lost count. One of the perils of the modern day digital store world.

Recently I was looking for some old John Wayne movies on Amazon. You can buy used and sometime new for less than $10 delivered. Well didn't see the note that two of them were for EU play only. Too cheap to return them so they went in the garbage. 

Still don't know why the would advertise the EU only play units here, you would need a DVD made in EU that has the decoder to read it. Oh well, live, learn and slow down. (Note to self)


----------



## darkzero (Aug 13, 2020)

Interesting, I had no idea digital calipers came in 10 thou resolution!

I bought 2 more of the $10 HF digital calipers last year. I like them & use them often, the cases they come in that is, the actual calipers I gave away.


----------



## yendor (Aug 13, 2020)

2nd on the disposable Harbor Freight $9.99 when on sale use the 20% off and you can just about throw it away instead of replacing the battery


----------



## matthewsx (Aug 13, 2020)

I’ve had good luck with the Harbor Freight ones.


----------



## addertooth (Aug 13, 2020)

I have some old calipers which I love, and they always seemed very repeatable and measured correctly against micrometer standards... but...
The old maxim in machine shops was you can trust them to the nearest hundredth of an inch, but never do 1/1000th of an inch work.   Use a micrometer (or if you are really old school) a pro-grade Vernier caliper. Debris can get on the rack, and cause some error in the pinion position.  

Please don't come back and tell me about your calipers which are good to 1/1000th, I have several which would also fill that bill, but in the shops I worked for, the lead machinist would smack you if he saw you doing a 1/1000 tolerance part with calipers.


----------



## mmcmdl (Aug 14, 2020)

I had a supervisor years back that could read his scale down to the .001s , and he could build a tank in a week ! I told him , the older you get , the better and faster you were .


----------



## RJSakowski (Aug 15, 2020)

I bought two paqirs of the HF calipers a few years ago.  The movable jaw was loose on the beam which caused poor repeatability.  In addition, the slide was rough.  The cause of the problem was the beam was never properly finished and had high spot.  A check of the beam width with a micrometer showed the location of the highs and careful stoning of them brought the beam width into uniformity.  Additionally, I polished the beamsliding surface.  An adjustment of the gib via the two adjustment screws on the top of the beam completed the job.  The calipers now consistantly agree with my micrometers.


----------



## pstemari (Aug 15, 2020)

Papa Charlie said:


> ....
> Still don't know why the would advertise the EU only play units here, you would need a DVD made in EU that has the decoder to read it. Oh well, live, learn and slow down. (Note to self)



No, any DVD player *can* play them, they just *won't*. The movie studios insisted on DVDs having something called a region code. Generally that corresponds to Europe, the US, Asia, etc. You can buy multi-region DVD players that will ignore the region code. Sometimes there's also a setting on the DVD player that lets you change what region code is allowed, but that's much less useful, especially since that sort of DVD player typically only lets you change the region code a handful of times.

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk


----------



## addertooth (Aug 16, 2020)

If you purchase your DVD player from a Military PX, it is more likely to support multi-region disks, as Soldiers/Sailors/Airmen/Marines use disks from around the world while travelling.  I salvaged and repaired a PX player when I was in Iraq, it supported all Regions, but I had to select the region in the Menu.


----------



## GunsOfNavarone (Aug 16, 2020)

It's funny how my taste/need in digital calipers have changed since slowly building my machining repertoire. 15 + years ago I found this place called Freight and Harbor, maybe you've heard of them? Seriously though, back then, no one around here heard of them. I got a set that were affordable. About 6 years ago I started learning the short comings and have slowly amassed a big set of (mostly) crappy calipers. I do have a Husky set that does fractions...I kinda dig that as the whole imperial thing is pretty convoluted to me.
I really try to use micrometers now when possible, but I'm OVER the cheap caliper thing no matter the convenience.
*edit
After posting here, I went to YouTube...What pops up? Yeah,I'm being "tracked". Anyway, That same caliper was in this "roundup" and its actually pretty interesting....
Caliper roundup


----------



## Papa Charlie (Aug 16, 2020)

Thanks for sharing that YouTube video. Interesting.


----------

