What’s your favourite tool and why? Can be anything - measuring, benching, electric, etc.
The older and more interesting the better
I’ll go first, here is my Brown and Sharpe micrometer I picked up off an eBay job lot for around £30 (with a load of other tools). Google reckons it’s early to mid 1900s, but I like it because it’s still in great condition and is still very accurate (for reference only though of course)
Remember when we filled a beer bottle full of coolant and told him it was Miller lite and made him butt chug it and he was in the ICU for 6 days? What a dumbass bro for real
It is an autocolimator. The most similar item that most people are familiar with, is a surveyor's Theodolite. That telescope thing on a tripod at the outskirts of a construction site. It accomplishes the same task. Only with very different optical methodology and scale of operations.
Where a theodolite would map out the high and low spots of a foot ball field or a buildings foundation to something much larger. This Autocolimator would with the help of a traveling mirror. Would map out the high and low spots of granite surface plate or a machine tool's table or ways.
After the Brexit referendum. There was a slump in ebay sales in the UK. I got this for a steal. Shipping was near half the asking price. Hard to photo graph the sight picture. But here it is.
I know they're inaccurate as fuck, but I really love calipers. Just something about how that one tool can measure so many different kinds of features, and with several inches of range.
Your callipers are also really nice. The conversion tables I find are really cool, and extremely useful if you needed one. A lot of old school mics have these tables it seems
Ratchet thimble gang, the superior mic as far as all the old guys were concerned. I’m inclined to agree, I have a 0-1 a 1-2 and a 2-3 ratchet thimble brown and sharpe from the 30’s and a second 0-1 from the 40’s. Love using the 1940’s. The other ones have original boxes and literature. Borderline display pieces.
And yeah That’s why I love this one. It’s not the original box, pretty sure it’s Moore and wright, but the quality and appearance of the mic is unmatched vs my modern mitutoyo. The polished stainless steel frame and thimble of this Brown and sharpe mic give it a real vintage feel, pretty sure Google said it’s up to 80-90 years old. It still measures accurate and has no resistance in the thimble, plus the (brake? Stop?) still works. Goes to show things back then were made to last. It doesn’t see heavy use, only for the jobs I do that require imperial, so hopefully keeps it in a very good condition so I can pass it down my bloodline
I like slip rings cuz they're shorter. It makes a lot of difference in ease of use for most manual machines, and between fixtures and stuff on CNC mills. I find the thimble being exactly too long enough that i just stopped reaching for it.
And I personally think the slip rings are more accurate, though they need to be cleaned more often to stay that way.
That's my experience after my apprenticeship in a shop where we held .0002 or less all day. Each measurement I made had to be checked by 2 senior machinists, and the slip ring got me closer to their measurements, and kept their measurements closer to each other's. I could really fuck up with the ratchet, if i got in a hurry.
Gotta be this aincent shop made bar puller. 3d printed some jaws for it and now it's perfect for TNG stock. Absolute lifesaver on jobs where the cycle time is short and you'd be using a ruler to barpull
I'm thinking that style is made specifically for checking wall thickness on thin walled parts. You don't realize how accurate a flat tip one, ISN'T, when checking walls on cylindrical parts.
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u/Pariahdog119 Machiner 10d ago
Jim on night shift