My alternative to Mitutoyo calipers

I don't know if this will be useful or not. I recognize lots of holes here. I should have used a mic to validate, and I should be using gage blocks. Eh. This is what I have...

 
They sure look nicer than my HF calipers I keep meaning to replace. :)
 
Reading this post just made me buy this:


I don't know about reliability, but compared to the iGage, the features appears to be the same. It has stainless steel body and lower price as an incentive.

Furthermore, there are a lot of good rating.

I almost bought the following since it's cheaper, looks and features almost exactly the same, just different name, but the reviews and rating are lower, so for a few bucks, I decided to go with the above:


For many years, I used a cheapo around $10 harbor freight, and it worked great for me, to my surprise. Sometimes the numbers jumped around showing some very interesting hidden features, and I took out/put back the batteries and it works again.

The plastic slide dial broke off and I still used it. But it's not very convenient. I didn't do much high precision things and as a result, high precision wasn't a big concern, and I thought a mic would do that anyway.

I do hope for auto shutoff to save battery and in accidentally turn on.

I also happen to have a manual caliper part of some lot purchase I bought. It's stainless Helio brand, made by Germany. It got stuck alot. So I cleaned up the "gear", and it worked better. That part is something I don't like, the gear makes it easy to be contaminated.

The bad part is that 2 of the 3 very tiny screws fell off of the screen. Maybe I need to visit a watch repair shop for this.
The funny thing is that if I put the screen back "evenly", it would get stuck. So it's at an angle. I would need to fix it before putting the two screws back on. But buying the digital above, I wonder if I ever will fix this. It's great that I don't need battery for it. So maybe it's a good backup.
 
I found these for a little more and they are absolute and IP54 rated.

I have two of those. a 4" and a 6". Been using them for years now and no issues.
 
I have two of those. a 4" and a 6". Been using them for years now and no issues.

That's the one I ended up buying it seems to be pretty good quality for the money. Maybe when I get better I will need a $200 caliper but for now I'll save my money towards better machine tools that might justify high end measuring tools.

John
 
Back
Top