Digital Calipers that don't eat batteries

If you want to get something a little more economical than a Mitutoyo, look for something that uses CR2025 or CR2032 cells: they will last longer than the button cells.
 
slow-poke said:
I want to mount a digital caliper to the tail stock of my lathe to make it easy to zero and measure depth when drilling. So I would like to purchase an economical digital caliper, Mitutoyo seems overkill, but I absolutely don't want one that requires a new battery all the time (the battery in my Mitutoyo's seems to last forever) and all the cheapo calipers I have are basically useless because the battery is dead every other time you go to use them.

Suggestions?
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my igaging have had good battery life. I do like them.
 
I have 2 igauging calipers, one Mitutoyo 6" nearly new, and a Mit 8" that is 13 years old. All of them have greater than 3 year battery life. The igauging ones use CR3032, and the Mitutoyo uses SR44 - don't use LR44 batteries in the MIT, they last about 1/3 to 1/4 as long but cost 75% of a SR44.
 
Dabbler said:
I have 2 igauging calipers, one Mitutoyo 6" nearly new, and a Mit 8" that is 13 years old. All of them have greater than 3 year battery life. The igauging ones use CR3032, and the Mitutoyo uses SR44 - don't use LR44 batteries in the MIT, they last about 1/3 to 1/4 as long but cost 75% of a SR44.
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+1 on using the SR44 batteries. The SR44 are higher power density silver-iodide batteries, while the LR44 are simple alkaline batteries. My Harbor Freight digital goes about a year with the SR44 battery.

Take a Sharpie and write the date of installation of your battery. It may be lasting longer than you think.
 
The older Harbor Freight digital calipers ate batteries quickly, probably because they only shut off the display when the went idle, but were keeping alive the measurement. This made them return to the same setting when you pushed the ON button, but at a cost.

Starting about ten years ago, HF changed over to having the battery completely disconnected when the caliper went to idle. You can tell if you have one of these because when you start it up again, it always reads 0.0000, and you have to close it up completely and zero it again to get an actual reading.
 
I love the metric/imperial conversions, and the large digits for my failing eyes. I'm 4.5 diopters far sighted, so every little bit helps.
 
Mitch Alsup said:
Is there a reason a dial caliper could not serve ??
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The modified caliper functions as a (almost) DRO, and electronic digital gives you features not easily replicated in a dial caliper. You can also use a small, simple, self-contained digital readout (basically a caliper with the head cutoff), which is what installed on the carriage:

Lead Photo Carriage DRO.jpeg
 
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