In college, early 1970s, I took a drafting course and learned to read verniers using drafting machines. I still use vernier measuring tools today including .0001" micrometers, . One is an 18" vernier caliper. It's a beast but it's accurate.
49 plus years I have been using the manual Vernier. I still prefer the manual one. Great piece, great tool. My 1.20 metre Vernier is a jewel for me. Very good video ! Cheers !
I've just inherited one of these from a retiring engineer. I gave him a puzzled look and told him I have no idea how to use this because I've only ever used digital. He gave me an earful about "back in my day" , "you kids" etc. Luckily for me, I have the internet now unlike him when he was younger. So, here I am watching your youtube video guide lol
I am 52 and I still have the caliper from a job when I was 22. It’s the only one I have, but being American I usually use the top scale. That is until I got into FPV! Now I use the bottom scale more often. Works perfectly. The beauty is that it cannot be wrong, where electronics can fail and become inaccurate. I work in HVAC engineering. We use a lot of quality mercury bulb thermometers. We calibrate our instruments with these thermometers. Our electronic thermometers get out of calibration. Mercury bulbs never do unless you break it. Relative humidity is verified with a wet sock on a mercury thermometer and a fan blowing across it. Dry and wet bulb temperatures are converted to a relative humidity on a psychometric chart. This stuff is not obsolete. It’s the gold standard. Great video. Never need a battery! Cannot be wrong. (Unless it was built wrong then you get what you pay for, but it’s still going to be repeatable).
As a machinist I use them daily. And I like the analog better then the digital. But it’s still a guessometer 😉 for the work I have to do sometimes. Great video and a great explanation.
Noob!! We are now in the 21st century in where our current technology makes much of our lives easier and yet you still choose to make your life harder as if your left behind 100 years!!
Good vid. I'm a toolmaker by trade (Camborne School of Mines Cornwall). So was taught both metric and imperial in fractions and decimal. I have all my Grandads measuring gear passed down to me, he was a shop foreman in the Midlands.
I was taught all of this back in the 80's and it is still something that I use regularly everyday. There is a sense of connection measuring things the same way that your grandfather probably did.. Happy flying!
Never used these at school in the 70s but was just given one & realised I had no idea how to use it, this video has helped me enormously…..although I do struggle a bit as I have dyscalculia which causes me problems.
I have manual and automatic calipers and micrometers. I'll be honest I haven't used the manual ones in years I got lazy and spoiled as a boss from years ago bought me a good quality automatic caliper and micrometer. Good info as always. Stay safe Lee
i bought a really old once from a second hand shop, then cleaned it and its measures are spot on! go it for only 10€ and its super well bult. best tool invesment in my life so far.
Watched this at work! I learnt how to use it at college but I forgot. Needed to use one to measure something as we don't have any digital ones a certain size on site atm. This video helped me so much. Thank youuuuu
I learnt using the vernier calipers at vocation school 20 years ago and i used it all the time. But my eyes had other plans and now im forced to use a digital one with huge numbers. And since thats the only thing ive used the last 10 or so years, i had almost forgot how to use the manual one. But it came back quickly after watching this video :) I never learned how to use a micrometer however... Guess thats the next video im off to see ^^
I've wondered how they work so thanks! Only thing I'd add is that the process of taking accurate measurements with a caliper is a bit of a skill by itself. Materials tend to all be plastic (to varying degrees) and you need to use the right amount of pressure for extremely accurate readings.
I'm looking at getting a Vernier Caliper and the digital ones are either crazy expensive or seem to be made of garbage. This led me to look at the analog ones only to find I had no idea how to read these things. After a quick Google search and your video being the first result, I now understand how these work and will be going analog over digital, thanks to your fantastic explanation. Thank you for such a simple but informative video
For years I kept a slide rule, it belonged to an engineer who worked on the space shuttles. Sadly it was among the items lost in a move. Hadn't thought much of it till you went old school. I actually used it in high school, by the time college rolled around I had to buy a Texas Insterments calculator, weighed like a brick due to the ni cad battery pack needed for the drivers and led display. Ah memories ....Take care.
I still love using these non electronic versions of tools. Always ready to work and takes that little skill that I was taught many years ago in those engineering workshops to read. A connection with those generations before who used the same stuff..
thanks broski literally learning engineering as a millwright trainee right now and this was super helpful seeing as i was a little lost on the measurements yesterday
Brilliant...just prdered a Mitutoyo MIT530-104 and am dying to start measuring stuff...I didn't know how to use it so thank you very much...perfectly explained!!!
Really, really interesting! Thanks, Lee! 😃 I had an electronic caliper that the battery leaked inside... 🙄 So I bought a second one, but I keep the battery out of it. Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
I don't use calipers very often, but when I need to, I need to. I had an an electronic caliper that was accurate and easy to use, but because I used it so seldom, when I needed to use it, the battery would be dead. Grrreat. I bought an analog caliper and I love it. Plenty accurate for what I need and it never fails to work. This video does a nice job of explaining how to use one. What's next? A slide rule?
But Lee, I need thousands! You guys are using sillimeters and it’s confusicating for us advanced enginerds in the States! First time ever that I have seen MM Calipers, thanks for the adventure. Silly Old Man over the pond.
Sadly, it is a dying art. Cheap, accurate battery operated calipers are easy to get. As an ol' school engineer - I prefer something that will always work, can be used in all conditions (even wet) and will work even if I forget to bring fresh batteries.. :)
This was great! My job used to require that I use calipers, but they were all digital, so I never learned to read a Vernier scale. Can't wait to check out more of your videos!
As a rule of thumb, I measure things.. :) Thank you for that video!I Have been wondering about getting a set of Calipers and although digital might be the way to go, I think the reading of the 'old school' calipers teaches us not only the numerical measurement value, but a visual way of reading measurment through a step by step value.
There's scope for a follow-up here, e.g. explaining the four measurement options: internal, external, depth and shoulder; checking diameters several positions around the part; and care of this precision instrument.
:) One in the series "You know you're old when ..." I have two of those, and I bought a digital one just for being able to easily show the measurement on blogs posts and RU-vid. But the "old school" ones are the acurate ones that I use to measure. The cheap digital one is purely to show the number. :)
I wish I had one of these. I prefer the analog version, but they are actually hard to find for a reasonable price for my usecase. Everytime I use my digital one I wish I had one of these
One big reason I stick to digital calipers is my eyesight, I find it much easier & quicker to read a number than have to look closely at notches or a dial to see what measurement points are closest together.
in germany, the optical shift effect is called paralaxe. it means, the meassurement will become wrong, if your point of view isn't exactly over the corresponding scale section. and as humans have 2 eyes, it means you'd have to close one eye for meassurement to avoid a paralaxe-failure. bonus information: i wasnt allowed to continue using this tool after dropping it accidentally to the ground. hat to throw it away and use a brand new one. thats how sensitive this tool is or how high german's quality control actually is.
Do you think you could do the same explanation for Imperial? I get it is probably the same gist, but it seems a bit harder to understand for me with all the fractions and stuff.
Not "memory lane" for me. I still have two of them and use them regularly. Though mine is just to the 10th of an mm. But I'm an old civil engineer, and during my studies and the first years of my career, we used a sliding mechanical calculator, I don't know the exact English word. But a funny thing from these days was if you asked an old engineer what two times three was. He (cause it was only men these days) slid his calculator and said: "Well, it's aproximatly six"
I got a set of those that are from USSR, 100 Micron (0.1mm) resolution, and use them occasionally when I can't find my $5 eBay knockoffs or the right battery since it chews through those coin cells!
@@loc4725 neither do the legit ones like my Mitutoyo pair. Its just that the SoC is better and software has deeper sleep features. Also it has protections against giving crap readings when the cell is going flat.
Not good to learn how to use, now I understand my order for a spring clip to hold plates on my dumbbells curve bar is not going to work. 🙃 My bar is 23.5 mm and the clip I ordered is 28 mm. Too big will slide off bar.
Keep the caliper free of rust and it will most likely continue to function for millennia, certainly much longer than the battery/circuitry of a "modern" digital caliper.
No, I'm in Europe, and my interest is the knowledge. After your video clip, I looked for how to measure in inch, not with 1/200, 1/500 or 1/1000 precision, but with 1/64, 1/128 (for example, how do you get a result of 2 73/128"?). Without paper and pen seems to be very difficult to get the real value from the vernier! Metric system is marvelous!