Did a little video on dial calipers comparing the cheap to the expensive and a look at my sons guitar building shop ,hope you enjoy,
The mitutoyo coolant proof digital calipers are rock solid! Frequently check them on blocks and they just plain work.
I always preferred Mitutoyo Carbide faced calipers. I had some Shars 8”, 12” that were very accurate as well, the 18” were off about .004” but its pretty hard to be very accurate with calipers that long.
nice thing about dial is they work when you need them unlike my fowler max-cal that requires a battery and likes to eat them. I have to remove the battery when I'm done with it or I'll be looking for a new battery when I need it.
Not like an original style caliper is hard to read. Guess i would compare it to a clock. All about personal preference. Like In the Pines stated, i want it to work when i need it! The frustration that goes along with batteries doesn't offset the ease of use. It actually cripples people when they don't have the help of a battery.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the original vernier scale calipers. They won’t catch debris and jump a tooth like dial calipers. I’ve had a set of Mitutoyo digital calipers for 20+ years, but they don’t get used much anymore. I use my Brown and Sharpe dial calipers more or less as a beater set to get rough measurements. The ones you buy today aren’t as good as the older models IME. They don’t feel as smooth and aren’t much better than a budget brand.
I retired from a company that made tools to make tools. LOL We also were the largest supplier of ammo tooling in the U.S. and did a lot of the government stuff for Lake City. I would say close to 90% of the employees had Mitutoyo Mics and Calipers. The digital stuff does die on occasion but they were a LOT more durable than any other brand. Most of our stuff had .0002 total tolerence so even holding something in your hand for long would give you a false reading. The most durable indicators were Interapid. No other brand was even close. I ran a manual surface grinder and to blend radii to .0002 we would check in a harig fixture and use johnny blocks with a centerline build up. Dial/digital calipers were only used to check stuff with .005 tolerance. Mics and block build ups were required for .005 and under. Inspection department had all sorts of stuff including Zeiss machines. We dealt with polish finishes and coating too so you had to leave an extra .0001 on your tolerance and hold your minimum finish so the polishers could bring it to a better micro while removing that .0001. Stuff that was to have a coating, like TIN (gold in color) had to be ground a .0001 - .0002 under tolerance so the final build tolerance would fall into spec.
