Cheap dial calipers.....

[woodchucker]

I have been lucky, I am getting more than 5 years out of my Igaging batteries. So impressed. @Dabbler We probably have different versions of the Igaging. Mine are more than 10 years old. They do what I need them to do, accurately. My Mit and Starrett mics agree within under .001 (shows half thou readings.)

 

[whitmore]

The ears for measuring ID have been ground incorrectly , so the measurement is off by .015 .

so then a POC.. if it doesn't measure correctly, it's useless.

No, not useless; calipers with no calibrated scale at all are still useful for comparison purposes,
and accuracy of difference measures will still work. If you set the ID ears according to a known standard,
you can just ignore the "measurement" readout.
If the ears are bent, though, and not parallel, they are pretty much useless.

 

[David2011]

First off I was taught that most dial calipers were only accurate within .003" Do a gauge R&R (reliability & repeatability) study on your caliper and you may not be so quick to claim accurate to a .001".
And for the OP.
If you made the gear jump dropping it, toss it. Doesn't take much booger up that gear.

After owning 3 analog dial calipers and 4 or 5 digitals, none of them were only accurate to .003”. I agree with others that have said technique is paramount. One of my digital calipers is a 4” HF. About all it’s used for is checking the length of rifle cartridges to see if they have to be trimmed and to monitor the overall length of loaded handgun ammunition. Neither is a critical measurement so I don’t know if I’ve ever even verified its accuracy. The others, digital and analog, are all as accurate as my Starrett .001” mics.

 

[David2011]

For those calipers that eat batteries, you might check out the button battery cards at Tractor Supply. You get a lot of useful batteries and some less useful but the price can’t be beat. It’s around $8 or $9 for dozens of LR-44, CR-2016, CR-2032 and other sizes I can’t recall off the top of my head. They probably don’t last like expensive name brand batteries but they’re cheap and after using them for at least 8 years I haven’t had any leak.

 

[Dabbler]

On my inexpensive calipers, the battery is removed after each use. With practice, you can manage to get very good readings in a digital vernier. I can choose a random gauge block and hit .001 consistently on either of my MITs, my Igaugings that are digital. On my Mit dial indicator, I can manage .002 or .003.

On my Mit vernier, I can get to about .002, but I never use it for precise measurement, just a rough idea at my computer. It is there because I have a magnified lamp that lets me see the lines!

 

[Nesse1]

This thread has inspired me to take another crack at servicing my MIT dial caliper. Nothing to lose at this point. Goal being, a decent set of beaters for scribing lines and what have you...(eek!)

As an aside, at work I use a MIT 12" digital caliper, and that thing is amazingly stable. Before use, I check zero, and they are always dead on. Open and close the jaws, hard or soft, and it's the same zero every time. Quality.

 

[Geswearf]

After @atunguyd mentioned the Tesa brand, I did a search for them. Yes, they seem to be Tesa Brown & Sharpe here. Then, on a whim, I clicked on Best reviews and saw some brands mentioned in other posts. Under 'Cons', Anytime Tools brand earned " some complain the caliper will not work correctly after being dropped". Got a good laugh out of that.

I had a Mit dial caliper that I used for years...and then I dropped it. Did a search for repair places and found this place. After nosing around their website, I was impressed by their evaluations of various brands and the free knowledge base they made available. I sent my Mit off to them and their repair was great...until about a year or two later I dropped it again. Long Island is expensive, but for good, name brand tools they are a good repair shop (my experience w/ them is limited to this one interaction and is not statistically significant).

 

[jbaccell]

After @atunguyd mentioned the Tesa brand, I did a search for them. Yes, they seem to be Tesa Brown & Sharpe here. Then, on a whim, I clicked on Best reviews and saw some brands mentioned in other posts. Under 'Cons', Anytime Tools brand earned " some complain the caliper will not work correctly after being dropped". Got a good laugh out of that.

I had a Mit dial caliper that I used for years...and then I dropped it. Did a search for repair places and found this place. After nosing around their website, I was impressed by their evaluations of various brands and the free knowledge base they made available. I sent my Mit off to them and their repair was great...until about a year or two later I dropped it again. Long Island is expensive, but for good, name brand tools they are a good repair shop (my experience w/ them is limited to this one interaction and is not statistically significant).

I believe Long Island Indicator has closed up shop and no longer in business.

 

[markba633csi]

Too bad

 

[RJSakowski]

All of the calipers that I have owned have a gib adjustment for the beam. Outside measurements are made by using the thumb wheel to close the jaws. Since the jaws are further from the beam than the thumb wheel, there is a torque created tha tends to move the contact point with the beam nearest the jaws away from the beam in favor of a point away from the jaws. Since the scale is located mid beam, this tends to give a lower reading. How much lower depends upon the force applied but also the clearance of head on the beam.

Cheap calipers, especially, tend to have less well polished beams and the manufacturers tend to leave the gib looser as this lowers any drag. Tightening the gib adjustment screws so they are just short of any appreciable drag greatly improves the reproducibility of readings. I bought two pair of HF calipers once when they were on sale for $10 each. Both felt rough and reproducibility was terrible. I worked the beam with a stone, followed by polishing with .5 micron diamond paste and adjusted the gib. They now agree with my micrometers to within the resolution of the readout.