In this video we answer the burning question of just how thick a standard Sanford Sharpie mark is. We use our high resolution Johansson indicator and some gage blocks to take precision measurements of Sharpie thickness.
Take this win, go to the woods, celebrating with a bonfire and a cryptic shrine you can look onto later on in your next years of bahhumbug moments when you can't argue with nonsense, and for each shrine, increase your monthly purchases of duraflame logs and hotdogs.
+Applied Science Hey Ben, Thanks for stopping by. I really liked the router you showed the other day. I seem to recall you are local to the SF bay area. Drop me a note sometime. All the best, Tom
if you want your mind blown, check out LIGO. it has the ability to detect changes in length of as little as 1/10,000th the diameter of a proton. www.ligo.caltech.edu/page/facts
@@Iowahurler82 Sure, but a lot of those who use imperial, when mentioning 1/1000" assume that it is some insane precision, and "one tenth" is beyond reach, unless you are scrabing. When in reality, a good machine and machinist can deliver 10um.
Great, now I'm going to be paranoid about cleaning off my layout marks. Definitely makes sense. We have to deal with the thickness of ink on paper in the printing world. A flat 4 foot tall stack of paper going into a press can be half a foot taller on one side coming out if there is more ink on that side. We have to use shims to keep the stacks level. Great video.
Used to work as a precision machinist at Professional Instruments Co in MN. We had quite a collection of Mikrocators. Even had one that read to 0.25 millionths. 2 millionths full scale range! It was frequently broken, but Johanson would repair and recalibrate it!
Tom, Interesting methodology there! Traditionally, some inks have been similar to shellac - india ink in particular - and the pigments are ground extremely fine. Dykem is a lacquer product, and the pigments and binders in lacquers quite typically run to ~3 mils dry film thickness (0.003" DFT) Your industrial painting coatings generally start at 3 mils DFT, and can get quite thick - we've specified some coating systems at work that ran to ~10 mils (~250 micrometers) after 3 coats were applied. Needless to say, the guys in a paintshop aren't using the same kind of gauge that you demonstrated, but their QC instrument calibration people may very well do something like this... Cheers! Eric
Also I was recently in a factory in Sweden and saw quite a few of these old CEJ test indicators. They're a pretty nifty design: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johansson_Mikrokator
@J :) American here that watches a lot of British TV. It is surprising even after all these years that Brits still throw imperial measurements into their conversations. You also have weird ways of pronouncing some words but every now and then out comes an American pronunciation. And of course there's the whole driving on the wrong side of the road. I think I've gotten used to it and then I get scared again until I realize that this is a British video and you guys normally drive on the wrong side of the road.
Tom I watched this when it first came out. Had to come back and watch it again. In my machining road I’m traveling, I look at stuff differently as I gain more experience. Thanks for all you do.
Wow, they're an order of magnitude thicker than I would have guessed! I never imagined layout lines on a block could actually affect 10ths readings. Very cool.
I have a similar gage, different brand, and performed the same test with similar results. I wouldn't have thought that I could measure the thickness of ink, but indeed I can! Thanks for the reality check.
Now, I'd like to see you test your concern about thermal effects. Hold one gage block in your fist for a minute, and see whether the expansion is measurable.
W R Moore wrote in Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy that holding an 18” reference bar in bare hands will expand it beyond its tolerance. If you like this video get that book. It is the same book RobRenz mentioned in the video referenced above
Hey Tom! As someone who is obsessed with doing things the right way, it's awesome to see someone work with the level of precision and care that you do. It's a dying art with few masters, you're one of them. Peace man, all the best
Looks like each thickness is a function of the viscosity of the carrier fluid, minus the volatile solvent. The thicker ones leave a thicker residue after drying. The better the coverage of the dye, the less viscous the carrier needs to be, therefore the residue layer will be thinner after drying.
"Magic with measuring tools" is always fun! Please do more. Like measuring heat expansion and what have you. Actually a systematic course in metrology in general would be super super interesting. Other than that... what does a "fancy gauge" like that one cost?
+John Creasey Pretty sure Tom's is a 15C... wonderful calculator and worth a fortune these days. I have an emulator on my Mac that get's daily use. RPN is the only way to fly...
+John Creasey Hey John, I'll have to drag out my HP collection for you guys. I have been using a 41CV for nearly thirty years at work. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Tom
+John Creasey I burned up my 41-CV in grad school... and my first 32S has a busted 4 button... Other than that, I love RPN, and now use whichever 35S is closest to hand - work, briefcase, home office, etc... ;^) All the Best, Eric
+John Creasey I think I read somewhere the rubber rollers in all those readers dried & shrunk with age. While on HP calculators, has everyone seen this? www.hpmuseum.org/
Like it a lot. I find that kind of experiments very interesting. It is often from very small details that you can learn a lot. Thanks Tom, keep the good work up.
I was wondering the same. While it builds up a layer of oxide, it oxidizes away some of the steel in the process. Will it be less or more after that? Will it maybe even out to a point where differences aren't measurable anymore? We must know!! 😄
@@bobbob8229 but does that thickness coincide with the amount of steel being used up or not, Im guessing its not 1/1 because thats not always how chemistry works.
I just stumbled on to this video as a suggested video on youtube. Idk why they suggested it, other than the fact that I watch some of AVE's videos. The moment that you got that first measurement on the thickness of a sharpie mark had my jaw on the floor. I don't think I've ever seen such a tiny quantity measured in front of my eyes like that. Cool stuff!
I used to use sharpies to shim parts on the surface grinder because we didn't have shim stock that thin. Works great, and you really get to know how much to put down after a while
Lol, I'm going to feel like a loaded heifer with a yardstick next time i pull out my vernier. I have about ten questions concerning this tool .,, but suspect the answers will be found watching the rest of your vids. :)
I deeply enjoyed this video. I don't think it could have been done better, to be honest. The camera work and editing are both excellent, your english is clear, your notations are tidy and easily legible, and the method of the experiment was superlative. I feel privileged to have been invited for a short look at how you think and work. Thank you.
+Richard King Hi Richard, Good idea. I have some of both on hand. Any suggestions on a consistent method of applying them? Small standard brush or foam paint roller? Thanks for stopping by. Best, Tom
Great video Tom,as usual.I watch many of the videos made by those in the machinist community,and this one is a fine example of the precision and patience of all of them,qualities that I do not have to the extent you(they) do,but I find very admirable.The first video of yours that I stumbled upon was a washing machine repair,if memory serves me.Comparing this one to that one truly speaks of your versatility and natural curiosity .Plus your obvious knowledge of physics and how and why things behave as they do. I truly enjoy your videos and shall continue to watch and wait for them.Thanks for making them
So, if there is ever a revisit, I'm curious to know whether the guage would rise and fall if it were passed over the sharpie lines or would it plow through the pigment?
+Paul Culbert You are wright. May be, to avoid the plunger to dig inside the ink, (like the operater said) while passing over, we could freeze the ink by placing the gage block into a freezer....
+Paul Culbert Hey Paul, The stylus pressure on this unit is pretty high. It might work with a larger diameter contact face. Thanks for the comment. Cheers, Tom
when I started watching, I was wondering about Dykem... glad you included it. Surprised by the results, not sure what good this information will be be but certainly glad I watched it and have that information.
@@dave1812 Thanks for finding this and sharing! Amazing to think it's just a spring, a screw, and a bit of twisted brass foil. So simple only a true genius could have invited it.
Been waiting for a RvB reference in the comments... I was about to cry out in anger that I've been tricked, backstabbed, and maybe, quite possibly, bamboozled.
I predicted the red sharpy to be a more dense deposit, having worked with dye pigments for a few years. The application method of the engineer dyes, as you said, were less controllable and this was reflected in the results. Great article.
If it’s anything like a dial indicator , There is the stylus part, which touches the object to be measured, and on that stylus, further into the measuring device , there are teeth on it that mesh with a cog/gear. As the stylus moves upwards, the gear rotates into a bunch of reductions and is kept in tension by a small spring resisting the rotation of one of the gears in the system. At the end of the gear train , one will be connected to the little arm that indicates the position against the background There could be many styles, but this is one style I have seen in a cheap dial indicator. Maybe it’s more refined in something as precise as ten millionths of an inch !
I could not be more wrong , the mikrokrator seems to have its own refined style of displaying measurement using a twisted bar that rotates . Do a search for mikrokrator and how it works and there was a nice video in the top few results.
@@JohnDoe-fz3nu LOL.....THAT and him grabbing the GB with a pair of metal pliers. I worked in a PME Lab and we could only touch the GB's while wearing the white gloves. Since he was only using the damaged GB's for "comparison"....his use of the word "roughly" was probably appropriate.
another great video, Tom! I've always wondered about this after wheeling over Sharpie marks on panels. I've run over Sharpie marks in my English wheel, and the anvils will impart an imprint of the marks into the panel.
Can you please use that indicator to show just how much slips and gauges change in size as they are handled please? Just how critical is it to be temperature aware when using fixed dimension gauges?
cool idea. of course, for proper pedantic weenies, you need to calculate the standard deviation, and probably talk to some of the statisticians at the lab and find out how significant the results are. :-)
Thumbs up & a new sub. Now I know how to answer this question when people ask! I'm an old machinist who has been pondering things similar to this my entire life. I feel validated that I'm not the only one who cares!
Interesting experiment. Friendly question... Tempature being vital, how can you justify dropping your variable test gauge into volatile solvent and quick dry with a compressed air can (both chilling the gauge)? Why is this not done to the verification gauge? Not follow the same thermal process, the verification gauge is no longer valid for this experiment.
+randall williams Having watched videos on RU-vid for years, I had only found one video that had no thumbs down. I always ask myself the same question: "What the fuck are these people smoking?"
Prussian blue is a color, not a product. The old-timers used copper sulphate solution. I just bought a tube of oil paint in, guess what, prussian blue. I am going to try it for scraping.
This reminded me of a time I was using my new mitutoyos to measure Graham crackers. One was .002“ off and my friend annoyed by this display said "better call the company" Tight spc table! That is practically useful data for tomorrow's mechanical nightmare. Content where you break down your interpretation of just a table of dimensions you took is gold.
Nice video! But at 4:30 the 0.0001" is 2.5 micron, not 25, if I get the math right. This reflects the general problem with imperial units: it's easy to make mistake when talking 1/1000 vs 1/10,000 on an inch, but it's harder to mess 2.5 vs 25 micron. Please, please, use metric system, people...
I've used sharpies since they came out, or at least since I was aware of them, because the dykem is inconsistent. Nice to find a channel that I can relax and watch and enjoy. I recently bought an Iron City blacksmith vice(5"), and ran across your little bullet vice project. Still have some of those to watch. I subbed, and I don't sub to very many, nice to see some experience at work.
Awesome data, I use the red sharpie because everybody else used black now they are coping me so I guess it is time to go back to black to a smaller error lol. Amazing to see how the layout fluid was so much thinker. I’ll remember that next time I got to touching off on the surface grinder. Thank you for the little details and showing the card too.
Very interesting demonstration. I regular work with tolerances of .0002-.0005 across 2-3 inches, I have found it very tricky to explain that to many customers. This may help with visualizing these numbers. That Johansson is sweet! Thank you for the vid! Marc
