@tim81
Gauges/gage: I posted some of my results on plunge style dial micrometers. Clockwise makes a very nice digital plunge micrometer that is a lot cheaper than some of the micrometers mentioned above. By the way for a little more $ you can get a cable for it which connects right to a PC via the USB port and you can record a reading write into an excel or word document. (There are lots of versions of this style micrometer on the web, but this one works well.) I have purchased 3 of them and checked the calibrations and they meet their spec. I spent several days measuring one of these (~5 micron over 1 inch)! I also purchased a couple of others that were a bit cheaper, but they did not work nearly as well. Get the 1 inch plunge length version that measures down to 1 micron, DITR-0105. It is about $64 on Amazon. The cable model number is DTCR-01 cable, ~$35. It is on Amazon. See my posting:
Clockwise even sent me email after I had had the micrometer a week or so asking me if I was happy with it!! They are trying. They sell a lot of tooling but I have not had much opportunity to test their other stuff. They have a decent listing of stuff on Aliexpress. At least they are trying.
At this posting you will see that I also purchased a set of digital micrometers (C shaped style). I did do simple calibration checks on them as well and they seemed to be as good as I could measure. When you get down to the micron scale dirt, finger oil are problems as well as alignment, parallelism of the measurement. Also thermal expansion, i.e. temperature variations cause measurement changes!
Gauges/gage: I posted some of my results on plunge style dial micrometers. Clockwise makes a very nice digital plunge micrometer that is a lot cheaper than some of the micrometers mentioned above. By the way for a little more $ you can get a cable for it which connects right to a PC via the USB port and you can record a reading write into an excel or word document. (There are lots of versions of this style micrometer on the web, but this one works well.) I have purchased 3 of them and checked the calibrations and they meet their spec. I spent several days measuring one of these (~5 micron over 1 inch)! I also purchased a couple of others that were a bit cheaper, but they did not work nearly as well. Get the 1 inch plunge length version that measures down to 1 micron, DITR-0105. It is about $64 on Amazon. The cable model number is DTCR-01 cable, ~$35. It is on Amazon. See my posting:
By the way, wrt, to any of the digital gauges, if you are not going to use them for a long while (>month) take the batteries out. Some of them are software powered up, but stay on even after you hit the off button and the display shuts down. Anyway, after sometime the batteries die. They probably do this to save the latest auto zero position. They all work a little differently. The Clockwise use a lithium 3 volt cell which lasts a long time if you take it out.
Clockwise even sent me email after I had had the micrometer a week or so asking me if I was happy with it!! They are trying. They sell a lot of tooling but I have not had much opportunity to test their other stuff. They have a decent listing of stuff on Aliexpress. At least they are trying.
At this posting you will see that I also purchased a set of digital micrometers (C shaped style). I did do simple calibration checks on them as well and they seemed to be as good as I could measure. When you get down to the micron scale dirt, finger oil are problems as well as alignment, parallelism of the measurement. Also thermal expansion, i.e. temperature variations cause measurement changes!
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. Dang I need more tools