Club 80-90 Forums

1949 vintage here, and now work almost entirely in metric, so much simpler than imperial, although if necessary I can go old school but can`t see the point.
About time this country came out of the past

Daisy wrote:1949 vintage here, and now work almost entirely in metric, so much simpler than imperial, although if necessary I can go old school but can`t see the point.
About time this country came out of the past

And post in binary

Sorry couldn’t resist no offence intended.

Regards Gary

Daisy wrote: About time this country came out of the past

Like buying a modern van and not clinging onto an old rusty gas guzzler you mean?

bat wrote:

Daisy wrote:1949 vintage here, and now work almost entirely in metric, so much simpler than imperial, although if necessary I can go old school but can`t see the point.
About time this country came out of the past

And post in binary

Sorry couldn’t resist no offence intended.

Regards Gary[/q

No offence taken and yes it does contain two things

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itchyfeet wrote:

Daisy wrote: About time this country came out of the past

Like buying a modern van and not clinging onto an old rusty gas guzzler you mean?

quote="itchyfeet"]

Daisy wrote: About time this country came out of the past

Like buying a modern van and not clinging onto an old rusty gas guzzler you mean?
[/quote]

That depends on your perspective as far as I am concerned running well maintained older vehicles is far more ecologically sound, as the older vehicle has long since repaid its manufacturing carbon footprint.

Unlike a newer car which may well not be around long enough to rust, and it will probably never repay it`s manufacturing carbon footprint.

By the way my Van runs on LPG which will go some way toward improving its emissions compared to petrol or diesel, I am not yet decided whether I want to convert my classic mini`s to LPG as they are already pretty frugal in the fuel stakes and again have repaid there manufacturing carbon foot print.

All this means that I need metric and imperial tools, that should bring the thread back on topic

Use both and in my job , machining parts I can sometimes be asked to machine a bore 1thou " above top limit which will be in metric , makes life interesting

Decimal inches is the one that always seems strange
used heavily in electronics in the past and still used.

Components had pitches of 0.1 of an inch or 2.54mm
or say a connector with a 0.15 inch pitch or 3.81mm

Years ago before CAD I used to.lay out printed circuit boards on clear film using tape on a scale of 4 to 1and photographed on huge walk in cameras where the scale was reduced back to 1 to1

While being happy to work with the metric standards in my CAD and solid modelling before I retired from Aerospace engineering, virtually all of my hobby workshop equipment has imperial calibration and much of my stock of materials, fixing etc, having been scrounged, donated or just hoarded from better times, is imperial in dimension. However my projects gradually become metric as imperial stuff runs out.

In my Imperial equipped workshop I use the metric system for machining relying on the use of digital measuring equipment and largely ignoring the imperial calibration scales converting using my digital Vernier age if say skimming to diameter on a lathe.
My good friend however, being a retired toolmaker, foolishly in my opinion, irritatingly insists on converting on the fly using a little book of tables and only too often buggers up a job on the last knockings by trying to be too clever.

I do find however that the metric system falls short in the field of special to purpose thread sizes etc i.e. Cycle threads for instance where some thread pitches for instance seem to me to be too coarse. but maybe this is just the influence of Value (cheap) Engineering.

CS

Pretty much imperial except for sockets. I use fahrenheit for high temperatures an centigrade for low, makes it more interesting.

Feet and inches (and shillings and pence) are sensible because base 12 is better than base 10. ie a foot can be divided by 2,3,4 and 6 to give a whole number of inches. Which is why buns are sold by the dozen.

Only noticed today, the 2 height restriction barriers in the car park for Uncle Toms Cabin on Southend seafront are different - one on the left is feet and inches and the one over the other side is in metric.

Can't really complain as I use a mixture of both depending what I'm doing or sometimes who I'm talking to. I'm of a 1978 vintage and I seem to remember senior school being all about the metric and trying to squeeze out any imperial knowledge we'd carried over from the 80's.