Chinese caliper review

[Homer J Simpson]

[Koen]

This is outrageous. The review I mean. It's cheap, it does the job, it measures whatever you don't want to risk your Mitutoyo on. The hell is this review.

[innkeeper]

if it wasn't for the cheap ones, id not own one at all.
have 3, and they seem to give very repeatable and reliable results for my needs.

one i damaged due to my own misuse,  one i've had for ~20 years, speedway brand, and one is a harbor freight, all the same just purchased at different times.

do i know there chap sure, if they die/break i am out 10-20 bucks, i'll go buy another one. but they serve the function i need as a non machinist. 
for what i use it for, electronics, and 3d printing, they have served me well.

I'm not spending 200 bucks on a MITUTOYO caliper i simply don't need that kind of accuracy and quality.

[hermit]

I couldn't watch it all.  The point of the video was solely they guy wanted to brag about his $200 calipers.  That was pretty clear right from the get go.   Often times you get these cheaper things and consider them unfinished 'kits'.  You know with a little work they will be quite serviceable.

[innkeeper]

ya got me curious and found this nice comparison of calipers.

if it matters to you, you can get away with a lot less money and still have the quality and accuracy
EZ Cal By iGaging - goes for less then 24 bucks on ebay delivered.

so you can get the quality and accuracy of a MITUTOYO on a beer budget.

[GreyWoolfe]

If anyone is interested the Igaging Absolute Origin is not $60 but $40 on Amazon.

[Gyro]

I wish it was in the UK! 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Igaging+Absolute+Origin

[Galenbo]

The only problem I had witch a cheap digital one, is that it sometimes showed 38,15 instead of 37,15
So I kept on removing material with my mill.

[innkeeper]

The only problem I had witch a cheap digital one, is that it sometimes showed 38,15 instead of 37,15
So I kept on removing material with my mill.

yea that be enough to get me to buy a new one..that is a pretty major error

i was impressed with that caliper review, id defiantly go for one of those Igaging.
to bad i didn't know about them before.

[CJay]

I've got genuine Mitutoyo, cheap Chinese metal calipers and even cheaper plastic ones, they're all slightly different (the Mitutoyo has a calibration offset engraved on them) but they're all plenty accurate for my needs, indeed I'm not even sure the Mitutoyo are the most accurate set as the Chinese ones are closer to agreeing with each other (I know, that's not a guarantee of accuracy etc...)

[Tac Eht Xilef]

i was impressed with that caliper review, id defiantly go for one of those Igaging.
to bad i didn't know about them before.

The woodworking & metalworking types have been raving about them for years. I bought a set a while ago and, while not perfect (for a start, they're not as silky-smooth as the Starret / Brown & Sharpe / top-end Mitutoyos, and they look like cheap digital calipers ), they're ~1/30th the price and mine easily meet the claimed specs.

[nidlaX]

I watched the AvE review and the cheapo caliper roundup a long time ago before purchasing my non-absolute origin EZ Cals. You do get something extra for your money with the Mitutoyos: better overall build quality, better quality control / consistency, and better battery life. The vanilla EZ Cals aren't bad, but standby battery life is poor and the build quality on the plastic parts is pretty mediocre. I don't like every review he does, but I think AvE had some pretty reasonable comments in this video.

[VK3DRB]

About 15 years ago a colleague showed me some Chinese plastic verniers (not electronic) he bought a Jaycar. It had the graticules on both the moving part and the stationary part the same and they were all equally spaced. So sliding the vernier, they either all matched up or not at all. 

We could not believe how stupid the Chinese manufacturer was, and how reckless Jaycar were in their quality control. . 

[Galenbo]

We could not believe how stupid the Chinese manufacturer was, and how reckless Jaycar were in their quality control. .

Those chinese keep the excellent stuff for their own population, and instead of wasting what's in their bin, they put it in 40ft containers direction Europe and America :-)

[wasyoungonce]

actually one use of the Jaycar plastic verniers, if you could call them that, was measuring ni-cad/lithium batteries.   Yes some Chinese batteries came non stamped with designation.....conspiracy anyone?

[Red Squirrel]

Recently bought a caliper as I never owned one, just a cheapy Home Depot job, fully made of plastic and fully analog.  Was surprised to see that it's made in the states though!  Thanks, Trump. 

Despite where it was made though I probably would not expect mm precision and repeatable results with something that cheap but gets the job done.  Like if I want to measure thickness of plywood or a pipe or that kind of thing.  Trying to use measuring tape for those things is awkward.

[Brumby]

There is a place for cheap calipers like this - and it's not in a serious machine shop.

I have a set (sub $20) bought from Aldi a decade ago.  They still live inside the original plastic bag inside the original timber box inside the original cardboard sleeve.  They are in great shape, but then I don't use them very often ... less than once a month at a guess.

But when I do use them, absolute accuracy is not paramount.  The last time I used them I wanted to check the thickness of some plastic bags for reordering.  I don't handle these often enough to pick this by feel, but appropriately folding a few layers and a measurement with the calipers allows me to work out what I have is 35um - not 30 or 40.

Another time was to work out what thickness of shim I would need to improve the thermal contact between the element and tip of a cheap soldering iron.  A couple of measurements with these calipers gave me a good starting point.


No, these are not the sort of things you would use in Aerospace or building the LHC, but for around the home/lab they are decent enough for a lot of things.

[saturation]

For non-machinist uses such as electronics  [measuring pads, component sizes, holes, cases, etc.,] most cheapo brand-x calipers work very well.  You can always test your purchase with a set of known standards.  Avoid plastic calipers for better accuracy prefer steel or aluminum or at worst, carbon fiber to minimize shifts with ambient conditions, the key material is very rigid and maintains dimensions with temperature and humidity. 

Its much easier to manufacture consistent capacitive pads used in digital readers than a mechanical cam mechanism, so they can be made cheaply up to a given precision, and can exceed the accuracy of similarly precise manual vernier caliper by minimizing parallax error.   That said I still have a vernier as a sanity check in case of digital caliper failure.

The real weakness per device is quality control and materials, those cheapos can fail later or sooner, or never.  My no names are > 6 yrs old and used weekly or so.

In general $3-6 0.1mm resolution and $8-12 for 0.01mm are almost on par, regardless of brand.

If you have no gages or reference caliper to test your cheapo against, US coins are made to 0.01mm tolerances and 0.001 gm weights, your country's mint could be similar. 

Why risk damaging your better tools when you can use the cheapos as bangers and loaners and general bench use. 

[G7PSK]

I had three pairs of the cheap electronic calipers none of them agreed with the other so I still use my old for better word manual calipers, battery never goes flat lathe coolant and oil does not affect them. Made in Japan in 1974 and as good as new.

[ChrisLX200]

I have around a dozen, none especially expensive types though two are Mitutoyo brand they are at their lower end. The worst buy was an 8" caliper that had a thin glass screen - yep, first gentle knock and it shattered. Can't believe they would use a weak galss cover (bulbous and convex at that) for something destined to be used in a machine shop.

My best micrometer is a Mitutoyo, accurate and with a quick-action screw. Treated myself after years of using a mechanical M&W micrometer which I bought as a teenager (now I'm retired :-) )

ChrisH

[CatalinaWOW]

I have a number of mechanical measurement instruments.  Some by Starrett.  Some by Brown & Sharpe. And several inexpensive calipers.  They all give the same answer when measuring reference blocks and the like, so it is really hard to justify huge prices for the famous names.  There are differences which may be important to different people at different times. 

The Brown & Sharpe can read to a quarter of a thousandth of an inch, and interpolated to perhaps a quarter of that.  If I ever need that level of precision (and possibly accuracy) it is the only choice I have.

I have dropped one of the cheapies on a concrete floor and after resetting zero all was fine.  I am not sure I would have survived the shock of dropping a high end instrument.

Some of the inexpensive instruments are plastic, and hence non-conductive.  Very useful at times.  The high end instruments are all conductive.

The feel of the higher end instruments is definitely better.  Maybe worth it if you are using it all day every day.