dial caliper advice?

[gf1984]

I want to buy a decent dial caliper for lock/pin, impressioning, ect. work. Any suggestions? I don't want the most expensive one but not the cheapest either. Just one well suited for locksmithing work that will give accurate measurements. Thanks.

--Steve

[TOWCH]

Any dial caliper should be sufficient for locksmithing work as long as it doesn't look like it's going to fall apart. I have a harbour freight set and it's done fine by me. Make sure to keep the teeth clean. Don't loan it to anyone and be nice to it.

[gstrendkill]

yea thats what i would have said.
harbor freight

[Black Zero]

I just got mine off ebay for $17. Great deal if you ask me.

[Gordon Airporte]

Digital is nice, and usually not that much more expensive. Try to get calipers that have a thumb wheel, especially if you're using them for impressioning. Making fine measurements like that is clumsy without one.

[linty]

Dials are old school and if well made can be very accurate, but if you plan to use it a lot then it's probably going to be easier for you to get digital calipers. I chose digital for work and am glad I did.

[ToyMaker]

Two caveats for digital calipers:
A. most (if not all) Chinese imports eat batteries even when the display is OFF.
B. LR44 button cell (the one the droids at rat-shack sell) is NOT a direct replacement for the SR44 that better quality digital calipers use for power.

I'll try to find the in-depth technical explanation for the above if anyone is interested.

robotic regards,

Tom
= = = = =
Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.
- - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), [The Devil's Dictionary, 1906]

[linty]

If the batteries are the same voltage and they fit, what else matters?
My digital calipers do tend to eat batteries, but I get batteries 10 for a dollar (lr44 i believe) and they last for at least a couple months each.

[ToyMaker]

It's not really a big deal - I'm just lazy. I used to put new batteries in my el-cheapo caliper 3-4 times a year. And it really hacked me off when I reached for it and had to go find a battery before I could use it.
I got a >good< deal on a Mitutoyo, put SR44s in it and have been using it for over 2 years. Been using the el-cheapo for a paper weight because the battery is dead.

robotic regards,

Tom
= = = = =
Don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things.
- - unknown

[greyman]

You should get calipers with a graduated scale to keep you on your toes Dials and digital read-outs are lazy. But, if you are going to use it a lot, you might want the latter.

[freakparade3]

Don't buy one from Foley-Belsaw. I bought their $60.00 digital micrometer and it's junk. It's not battery operated digital, it has scrolling numbers on a wheel. It's never been accurate and although they send a spanner to adjust it making a tool accurate to the thousandth of an inch with a tiny hand tool has proven to be impossible (at least for me). Inconsistent readings on the same cut, difficult to use, especially if you are left handed like I am. I found a sompler form of a micrometer i am going to order. It's $100 but all you have to do is push the micrometer into the cut and it gives you a reading. It's a little pricey but I guess you get what you pay for.

[vrocco]

I picked a digital one up from harbor freight awhile ago for about $15 and it has worked just fine for the last few years.

At that price I could afford to replace it every year if i had to.

[kg4boj]

The diffrence between LR44 batteries and SR44 is in the chemistry .
The SR44 has a silver cathode, and the LR44, a manganese dioxide cathode.

The voltage for the SR at full charge is 1.55, and the LR only 1.5, or .5 volts off, now some devices are really picky about voltage, particularly small digital electronics, so the silver cell will only drop to about 1.2 volts after expending all of its energy, while the LR will drop to .2 volts lower, for 2 batteries with the same storage potential (I don't believe they are both the same...) You are going to want as flat a discharge curve as you can get for the electronics to function repeatably and reliably, maybe that fancy caliper is designed to shut down at 1.2 volts, so I've been told the L coin cell batteries drop in voltage much faster, so while there may be lots of energy left in the battery, the sensitive digital electronics cannot step up the voltage enough to be usable and the battery needs replacement before its time has truly come.
I dont believe there is a significant amount of difference in the two cells ESR's under that load so I wouldn't worry about that.

Anyways, that is WHY they say you cannot replace one ~1.5V battery with another.... but if you get them cheap, and they work... and they do not leak, go knock yourself out, this isnt going to effect your locksmithing work much.