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Caliper question

I have been using a cheap set of hornady digital calipers and they took a crap on me last night.

Here are my questions

i really dont like the dial type, but how does the accuracy compare between dial and digital?

I am looking at a set of Mitutoyo digital ones. 500-196-30 is the number they use. Anyone use these?

Any other recomendations?

I dont really want to spend a fortune on them. These are in the upper end of what i would like to spend, but the company is well known for quality so im ok with it.
 
While you're shopping in that price range, take a look at Starrett 799A-6/150 6" Digital Caliper. I don't think you could go wrong with either choice. Quite frankly, you can get a set of digital calipers at half the price of either the Mitutoyo or Starrett that are plenty good enough for reloading.
 
Holy cow, $200 for a caliper? :o

I think any decent dial caliper, even the $20 pachinko specials, will give you ±0.0005" nowadays.

Between that and a micrometer or two, you should be good to go for a lot of things.
 
I have had good luck with most any mid range or better ones. mitiu. and starret are probably the best.Nowadays they say most are pretty accurate.
 
the mitutoyo is more than you need UNLESS you are sorting bullets.
for general reloading work i use $15-25 import electronic calipers.
i do own a couple of dial calipers in case some day we cannot buy a battery.
i use the 500-196-20 for precise stuff.
 
If you want information as to quality, vs so-so, vs junk, go to the long island indicator service website ;)
 
stool said:
the mitutoyo is more than you need UNLESS you are sorting bullets.
for general reloading work i use $15-25 import electronic calipers.
i do own a couple of dial calipers in case some day we cannot buy a battery.
i use the 500-196-20 for precise stuff.

These are what i ended up buying. Found them for $111 plus tax, shipped on amazon. I needed some other stuff also.

The problems i had with the cheap ones is that they needed to be zeroed almost every dang time i closed them. Then they started reading low all the time. Not a fan of that. Thanks for the responses guys
 
Quoted from http://longislandindicator.com/p135.html

"Beware of fake Mitutoyo digimatic calipers. They are being sold for less then $100 on eBay and Amazon and several other online sources. It would be prudent, if you really care for Mitutoyo quality, to purchase from an authorized Mitutoyo distributor. If you aren't sure, you can always call Mitutoyo and they will direct you to a reputable distributor in your area. If you don't care about the label, there is no need to spend that much money on a phony Mitutoyo. Just buy the generic Chinese calipers which will cost much less."
 
I am perfectly satisfied with my El Cheapo Chinese dial junk. I have been using it for probably 20 years. On the money.
 
My job was to check calibration, inspect, clean and document all the measuring instruments in our labs and out in production, along with rejecting instruments and ordering replacements. I did this for the last 20 years I worked before retiring. I can say from MY experience that Mitutoyo is hard to beat, Starrett not so good, although Starrett had improved but I always wanted Mitutoyo. Having said this, I use a cheapo from Midway: http://www.midwayusa.com/product/604242/frankford-arsenal-electronic-caliper-6-stainless-steel?cm_vc=ProductFinding
I have put this digital caliper through the same set of ISO approved standards at work that I put all the other instruments through and it passed every time. I bought two when Midway had a special on them, just something to think about.
Dave T
 
I have and use digital calipers, but there is always the old faithful dial caliper within reach. The batteries have never crapped out or misbehaved on the dial calipers. ;)
 
I have long used a Craftsman dial type caliper, but I wanted a digital so I could zero a measurement like hitting tare on a weight scale.

I bought the cheapie from Sinclair and it seems OK, but I found out quickly it will drain a battery in less than a few days if the battery is left in the caliper even though it is turned off.
 
Mitutoyo says accuracy on the dial calipers 0-6" is 0.001 with 0.001 graduations
the Digital 0-6" they say plus or minus .001 accuracy with 0.0005" graduations.

Mitutoyo calipers are hard to beat for calipers!

PS--Calipers are NOT meant for precise measurements! They are good enough for most reloading tasks for most of us.

Precise measuring requires micrometers and other instruments designed for precise measurements.
 
223Randy: I think Mitutoyo meant .0005 resolution. That .0005 is used to round up/down to the nearest .001. Sorta like using the vernier on an old school caliper to decide whether you round up/down. Calipers are not meant to be read to the 4th decimal place.
 
I use the dial type Browne&Sharpe . Bought used on ebay for around $80 if memory serves me correctly. I like the slider rather than the wheel.
 
I will NOT settle for any caliper (digital or dial) that is being marketed with accuracy that can be off +-.001 My 4 calipers are all within +- .0005 accuracy. I'm not thrilled about accepting .0005 deviation, but I can accept it (ie; I would prefer zero deviation!!). But there's no way I will accept .001 deviation in accuracy.

With that being a prerequisite, the first time that I bought a digital caliper, my dial calipers were soon permanently assigned to secondary tasks, and I rely on the digital caliper for 90% of all chores now. My dial calipers now are used mainly as a backup and way to double check the digital caliper readings on occassion. An accurate digital caliper is just faster and handier to use and becomes the go-to caliper by instinct.

I have two dial calipers. One is used for double checking the digital caliper, but the other dial caliper is set up with Hornady bump gage attachments connected onto it year round. This way I can just grab it off a shelf, and start sorting my sized cases immediately without having to adjust the dial caliper to a default reading from scratch. When you are sorting bullets or cases that are all within .001-.003 thousandths of each other from one case to the next, the dial needle is fast to read being that the needle moves a relatively short distance within the same one, two, or three calibration ticks over and over. But otherwise, a digital caliper is much faster to glance at for general use
 
i find it interesting the mitu uses 4 places on the caliper that shows in .0005 steps, but my
395-741-30 0-1 mic does FIVE places with the 5th place being .00005 steps.....1/2 of a 1/10,000th !
 
It seems opinions vary greatly on calipers lol. Amazon has a great return policy, so if i am unhappy with them, they will go back.

From what i have read so far on here and several other places, they should serve me well.
 

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