Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Vernier Caliper


A pair of calipers is the engineer's right hand man, at least for mechanical engineers anyways. The earliest caliper date back to 6th century BC used by (surprise surprise) the Greeks.  I am not here to give a history lesson because I hate history, I am here to tell you how to use one of the most basic and common types of caliper, the Vernier Caliper.  The basic layout of the Vernier Caliper is shown below.  This information is pulled straight from the Caliper Wiki but it is important enough to restate here.

  1. Outside Jaws: Used to measure an external dimension
  2. Inside Jaws: Used to measure internal dimension
  3. Depth Probe: Used to measure a depth dimension
  4. Main Scale Top: Millimeter (mm) scale
  5. Main Scale Bottom: Inch (in) scale
  6. Vernier for mm: gives interpolated measurements to 1/10 mm or better
  7. Vernier for in: gives interpolated measurements to 1/128 in or better
  8. Retainer: Used to lock slide into place
Below is a video from this Vernier Tutorial that shows the correct way to use a pair of Vernier Calipers.  I recommend you visit the site for an in-depth analysis.

1 comment:

  1. Again, a better post. The focus on tools is good. But I think if every post is just an explanation of what a tool is with a video of how the tool works, that could get a little boring. Try not to fall into too much of a pattern.

    I'm not sure where else you could go. You hate history, politics, society, and probably some other things you haven't listed yet. But those areas are where we have interesting controversies and discussion points when it comes to engineering and engineering communication. Maybe think about expanding your posts now to looking at engineering particular systems or products? Then we might have more to talk about.

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