Dial calipers or Digital, which is better, easier to use
- Thread starter Boltcarrier
- Start date
- Location
- Vancouver Island
I started out with a cheap CanTire Mastercraft digital when I first got into reloading, but have been slowly upgrading my measuring gear over the last few years, including picking up Mitutoyo micrometer standards for verification purposes.
I was actually kinda disgusted to see how accurate/repeatable the CT digital is; I had been hoping to justify the cost of jumping to a Mitutoyo digital, but I must have lucked out and gotten a Thursday production one... drat! Battery-wise, I've had to change it out maybe 3 times in 10+ years (but watch - it'll now die tomorrow, having typed this...).
I was actually kinda disgusted to see how accurate/repeatable the CT digital is; I had been hoping to justify the cost of jumping to a Mitutoyo digital, but I must have lucked out and gotten a Thursday production one... drat! Battery-wise, I've had to change it out maybe 3 times in 10+ years (but watch - it'll now die tomorrow, having typed this...).
i have 4 or maybe 5 now, just bought another cheap digital one , again from CT it reads in fractions, Thought WTH, I have another cheap chinese one, but the battery will go dead sometimes. It is accurate.
The one I use the most is a 4 in dial , it is handy. The best is a straight 6 in , but hard to read, than I have one that is in inches/ mm , english ? I would have to look. No dial on it.
The one I use the most is a 4 in dial , it is handy. The best is a straight 6 in , but hard to read, than I have one that is in inches/ mm , english ? I would have to look. No dial on it.
Digital are by far better than dial, as far as accuracy/repeatability/reliability goes. I started my machinist career off with a 12" dial Mitutoyo, and all it took was one fall (IN THE CASE) off of a bench, and it must have mangled a tooth on the rack. Now it skips a tooth every time it runs over that spot, and will never measure properly again with out repairs that would likely cost more than the tool is worth. Junk can build up on the rack and affect your measurement. The only part I miss about a dial caliper is the visual representation of how far off of your target measurement you are.
The scales on digital calipers are all very similar; the movement of an expensive caliper isn't necessarily more precise than a cheap one. The difference comes in build quality. Expensive calipers have tighter fit tolerances, and surfaces that are ground much closer to parallel/square. I can take my el cheap-o CT caliper, measure something solid (I.e. no give at all), then force another 10 thou out of it depending on how hard I push. A quality caliper makes it much easier to achieve a repeatable measurement by removing a lot of the requirement of replicating the EXACT same forces/movements/positions every time. The overwhelming majority of the errors experienced with cheap calipers are user induced.
The scales on digital calipers are all very similar; the movement of an expensive caliper isn't necessarily more precise than a cheap one. The difference comes in build quality. Expensive calipers have tighter fit tolerances, and surfaces that are ground much closer to parallel/square. I can take my el cheap-o CT caliper, measure something solid (I.e. no give at all), then force another 10 thou out of it depending on how hard I push. A quality caliper makes it much easier to achieve a repeatable measurement by removing a lot of the requirement of replicating the EXACT same forces/movements/positions every time. The overwhelming majority of the errors experienced with cheap calipers are user induced.
- Location
- Western Manitoba
A good discussion in this thread. Somebody recently posted a link to a write-up about the Houston Warehouse bench rest experiments (1980's). Main guy in that escapade (Virgil) did not resize the brass he fired in his bench rest rifle - says that he had the neck of that chamber precisely reamed, and would work his "new" brass to get .0007" clearance - load it and fire - and reload it, without sizing it again. 5 shot groups - 0.025". Hard for old guy like me to imagine - that stuff could be done to that fine a tolerance. Grinding the reamers to cut the neck. Peeling case neck wall thickness, precisely. My Mitutoyo micrometer is supposed to be accurate enough to give me that kind of reading, but is a hard thing to do for three or four times in a row and get the same number each time. Way, way past what any calliper is capable of measuring.
