Britain said it was taking steps to return to the traditional system of imperial weights and measures

[Karl_T]

The worst is when they mix them. I am on my second john deere tractor with both metric and imperial fasteners. Drives you nucking futs picking out wrenches to take it apart. THEN you try to put a 6mm bolt in a 1/4" theaded spot, or a 3/8 bolt in a 10 mm thread, ya da ya da.

 

[savarin]

yes, but it doesn't stop people from thinking those were the golden years, before all this sexual revolution, women's rights and immigration stuff. Funnily enough I lived in NZ for a couple of years, which is a top destination for the "wish it were the 1950s" peeps, and although it was beautiful the houses were drafty, heating was by coal (or not at all) and air pollution was terrible in winter. Sounds kinda like what you're describing

Ah the 50's, short trousers in the middle of winter, fog so thick you couldnt see across the road and people dying from respiratory problems, polio still running around, chicken pox parties so all the kids got it at the same time, dentistry with no anesthetic, TB still doing the rounds, roast beef or lamb on sunday, cold meat and mash on monday and if there was any left, there would be, mum made certain of that, the remains minced up with vegies and baked in pastry as a pie. thursday dinners I cant remember but fridays was fish and chips and saturdays was bacon egg and chips.
In the winter ice would freeze on the inside of the windows in the unheated bedrooms, the whole family sitting huddled round the single bar electric fire listening to the "wireless"
Ah the good old days.
There were some good things though, Doctors cost nothing and made home visits, bread and milk was delivered daily, the greengrocer delivered twice a week, the grocer delivered once a week.
sundays were good the shellfish man came round selling winkles, whelks and prawns and the muffin man with a tray of fresh baked crumpets balanced on his head ringing his hand bell.

 

[projectnut]

I for one wish that we (U.S.) had gone metric back when it was discussed when I was way younger!

This discussion has been going on long before any of us were born. It's been raging on for more than 100 years There was a thread on this subject on the Practical Machinist board a couple years ago. Someone copied and pasted a newspaper article with the same emotions being expressed here. At the end of the post they included the date the article was published. It was 1917.

 

[WobblyHand]

This discussion has been going on long before any of us were born. It's been raging on for more than 100 years There was a thread on this subject on the Practical Machinist board a couple years ago. Someone copied and pasted a newspaper article with the same emotions being expressed here. At the end of the post they included the date the article was published. It was 1917.

Not exactly. The question is more, why go back? Britain did go metric. It's a fact. It was a costly effort. It took time to implement. What purpose does it serve to revert?

I have no dog in the show. Have relatively complete set of tools for both. Use both systems as appropriate.

 

[pdentrem]

GM made their decision when they made the Citation. It was their first metric car. I have complete sets of tools in both systems since then.
Pierre

 

[projectnut]

GM made their decision when they made the Citation. It was their first metric car. I have complete sets of tools in both systems since then.
Pierre

At that time maybe the Citation was all metric, but other GM cars were a miserable combination of both metric and SAE. I worked for a Cadillac/Oldsmobile sealer in those days. Most of the body fasteners were metric while the frame, running gear, engines and transmissions were "mostly" SAE. I say mostly because all the main castings had SAE fasteners, but some of the add on exterior parts like solenoids had metric fasteners. As time went on more and more fasteners became metric.

 

[RJSakowski]

I just want to be consistent. If you specify metric fasteners, draw it with metric dimensions, and vice versa. But at my job they draw Imperial and specify metric fasteners. I don't care much for that.
I don't have an opinion on what the UK government does. I have trouble enough dodging politics locally. Hostile work environment took on a whole new meaning in 2020. Lol

Designing in metric or Imperial had an impact when work was laid out with a rule and scribe. Having dimensions given in nice round numbers in metric and then having to lay out the work with your inch rule would ruin anyone's workday.

It is less so in today's modern world with CNC machining, My CNC could care less if it's metric or Imperial. The DRO's on my mill/drill and lathe will easly change from Imperial to metric at the push of a button. The last thirteen years, I worked in companies associated with medical fields where dimensions are metric. In one case, I had to make a component whose main feature was an 8 x 12 pattern of holes on exactly 9 mm centers. I didn't have the CNC at the time and locating the holes in Imperial would have been tedious and prone to error so for drilling the holes, I simply switched to metric and set the subdatum on the first hole and drilled away at nice even 9 mm increments.

In another case, I had to design a part that had the same pattern but the part was dimensioned in Imperial for an outside vendor. The problem was how to dimension the part so that the approximate .354" conversion of 9 mm wouldn't cause a problem at the twelfth hole due to losing the .00033" on each hole location. The problem was solved by using ordinate dimensioning for the hole pattern.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that our raw materials are dimensioned in Imperial and making metric parts can be difficult. In one case, we made acrylic blocks which were used for attenuating x rays. The dimensions were nice whole metric numbers. One block in particular had a thickness of 20 mm. We could buy 3/4" acrylic which has a thickness of 19.05 mm and could easily be machine to make a 5" x 5" block without facing or we could buy 7/8" sheet and face down to exactly 20 mm. We chose the former, labeling the 3/4" blocks as a nominal 20 mm. Not a problem for a single block as the difference was well within the needed tolerance but if you were building a stack of blocks, that error would a stack up and the calibration of the x ray machine would be off. Think about that the next time you get an x ray.

Going the other way, we had an operation in the UK and one of the products used 4" diameter acrylic. The part had been designed prior to their conversion to metric and to specifically fit a particular x ray machine. They finally used all their old stock and had to find a new source. Unfortunately, all the acrylic was now metric so they would have to buy oversized stock and turn both the i.d and o.d to Imperial dimensions. They ended up having us machine the part and ship them to the UK.

Most plywood now comes slightly less than the nominal Imperial sizes. so 3/4" plywood is actually about 1/32" thinner. For cabinet makers, this means any rabbeted joint would have a gap. 1/4" products re actually more like 6mm. At least, the woodworking tooling industry has come around to offering undersized router bits.

What most people don't realize is switching from one system to the other is not simply a matter of relabeling or providing slightly more or less product. There are serious supply consequences to making system conversion.

 

[pdentrem]

At that time maybe the Citation was all metric, but other GM cars were a miserable combination of both metric and SAE. I worked for a Cadillac/Oldsmobile sealer in those days. Most of the body fasteners were metric while the frame, running gear, engines and transmissions were "mostly" SAE. I say mostly because all the main castings had SAE fasteners, but some of the add on exterior parts like solenoids had metric fasteners. As time went on more and more fasteners became metric.

Yes it was a mishmash of systems across their products! In those days likely it was still an issue to source components from their suppliers in metric. It still forced me and the other guys to purchase the tools at our expense of course.

 

[RJSakowski]

I design and work in Imperial. For those dimensions which are metric by nature, I convert to Imperial. I use Imperial fasteners simply because I can buy them in bulk at the local DYI or hardware or farm supply store. Metric fasteners come in those little bins, wrapped in plastic, and usually at about four times the price.

 

[tq60]

Yup...

Working on a project the is using brake drum from fire engine as base, international brand, with a wheel hub as interface to the column.

It is a BBQ for back yard.

The hub has 2 rings of studs, wheel lugs at 0.885 ish (METRIC) and studs for the center floating axle 0.775 ( SAE).

At the distributor the metrics are 4 bucks each and sae 50 cents or so.


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