Poconolg said:
Are Igaging tools any good? I see they have ball micrometers for under $100. Are they worth it or am I throwing my money away. I am only going to use it periodically,.
"Any good" depends on your expectations, and your needs. What level of accuracy and precision you you think you need? The micrometer you are looking at is made in China. I have a story about that.
A number of years ago I bought a digital caliper from Harbor Freight Tools. It seemed to be okay, but it ate batteries. Plus ... I'm a dinosaur. I never really warmed up to using a digital, so it sits on the shelf and I use my dial calipers on an almost daily basis.
Several years ago I had a visit from a friend from Europe. He is a firearms aficionado. He expressed a desire to get a genuine Lyman digital caliper while he was in the United States. I don't remember where we ordered it, but we ordered one, and it arrived while he was still staying at my house. At one point I took his Lyman digital caliper and compared it to my Harbor Freight digital caliper (which cost about half what the Lyman had cost).
They were the same. I don't mean "similar." I don't mean "pretty much" the same. They were identical. I don't care what aspect I looked at -- the casting marks, the lettering, the construction inside the battery compartment -- everything was
exactly the same. And that's the fundamental truth about most consumer-grade Chinese tools. They ARE all the same. They all come out of the same factory, and they just get a different name slapped on at the end of the assembly line.
You're looking at a digital ball micrometer that sells for around $65. Is it worth $65? Not to me. Being a dinosaur, I'd spend $35 and get the analog version (which, in fact, I have). I know how to calibrate the analog version so that it reads zero when it should read zero. I know the digitals calibrate by pushing a button, but I don't know how that works so I'm not sure I trust it. The Igaging digital ball micrometer I found on Amazon claims to read to 5 ten-thousandths (.00005). Is it really that accurate? I doubt it. Does it matter? I doubt it. Using a mechanical, analog micrometer I've found that a spec of lint from a tee shirt is enough to affect the reading, and that's only reading to the nearest thousandth. Even if this thing does read accurately to .00005" -- that's clean room accuracy. You aren't working in a clean room.
Bottom line, the Chinese mike is not the equal of a Starret or a Mitotuyo. On the other hand, you're making ammunition, you're not in the aerospace industry. Is it "good enough"? Again, it depends what your standards are. The Chinese calipers and micrometers are "good enough" for my purposes. I don't know if they are good enough for yours.
I will note that I have a Chinese 1" micrometer, and I also have a good Brown and Sharpe analog 1" micrometer that's now about 60 or 65 years old. The Chinese mike matches the B&S for everything I have measured with both. That's good enough for me, and it gives me a degree of certainty that my other Chinese measuring tools are "good enough."