Ebay micrometers

[alamogunr]

It is interesting reading the posts here by those who have used micrometers on a daily basis. While I have been familiar with mike's while working as a manufacturing/industrial engineer, they were not something I used all the time. Since getting into guns and reloading, I have acquired a B&S 0-1" as well as a government surplus Scherr-Tumico. Also have a B&S "disc" micrometer used for measuring paper/cloth thickness and a blade micrometer.

The Brown & Sharpe 0-1" and 2 dial calipers were from work before I retired. The were just sitting in a drawer in the gage lab because everyone wanted the digital instruments. Several couldn't read a vernier. I asked if I could buy a surplus micrometer and caliper. They just gave them to me. The others I got on Ebay. I guess, if I ran across a good deal on another mike, I might bid or buy but I sure don't need any more.

[cwheel]

As a retired machinist it's sad to me to see the price of the tools we paid dearly for come down to pennies on a dollar value on ebay. The reason I see this happening is the lack of manufacturing in this country and farming out manufacturing work to China due to lower costs of labor. What amounted to a honorable way to earn a living that many companies made a good living from now is just has a small part left in this country. My Starrett 0-1 inch micrometer ( #230 ) in a hard case cost me almost $200 while I was still working. Now, go on ebay and see them selling for $30. Same is true of the contents of my filled tool box. I spent over $20,000 buying the tools contained within, in these times due to lack of demand, worth just a fraction of their costs. People going into the trades today have a much dimmer expectation of the opportunities. When GM announces in a stock holders meeting that after the American tax payer bailed them out, they have moved 80% of their manufacturing to China ( along with the American jobs attached to this ) GM is not the only one doing this. You should be able to buy machinist precision tools needed for reloading at fire sale prices on ebay now, one of the few good deals out there for a reloading. I got to rise my family and retire quite comfortably by todays standards, a chance my grandchildren won't get in this trade. It's a different world now, I got to live to see the change. In this case, I don't think it's a good one
Chris

[hermans]

I also got tired battling with the cheap Chinese ones, specifically the verniers. So I finally decided to get a Starrett, it came at a hefty price, but what a pleasure! I also bought a Moore & Wright micrometer for the finer measurements, also works very well.
For me...life is to short to work with cheap tools, especially when it comes to measuring tools, in our world we have to trust our measurements!

[RED BEAR]

cwheel i feel your pain have 3 roller toolboxes full of tools that i spent a small fortune on . just can't bring myself to sell them off. still have hopes of someday getting a small lathe and mill for my garage.

[uscra112]

One reason that hand gaging tools like mikes are not in demand is that so much precision gaging is now done by automated machines like CMMs. And parts machining is also automated. Even the work done by the old time toolmakers is now done with CNC, and gaged with CMMs. I spent the last 15 years of my career automating the process control gaging for GM and Ford, so I've seen this up close and personal. I don't recall that any of those engine and transmission plants I worked in even HAD a toolroom in the old sense.

All the knowledge and skills I learned in the '60s are obsolete. I suppose that's one reason I repair and restore old guns - lets me pretend that I'm still relevant.

[Three44s]

cwheel and uscra112 just depressed the daylights out of me with the truth!

I can not help but think that there is still more to the story about automation vs human intervention however.

A machine can measure but critical thinking? No

Take the aviation accident recently where the turbine let loose and killed a woman passenger. I have no idea what the protocols are in manufacturing the large high rpm components for those engines. Nor can I surmise whether it was abuse post manufacture or just too many hours or lack of inspection that caused the failure. I just offer it as a hypothetical that a machine “spitting” out critical parts on a measurement does not have the “eye, brain or feel” of a well trained human.

Our wonderful bean counters don’t give a rats backside about collateral damage unless the Civil awards in court over take their savings on the assembly line and by the time the collective awareness catches on, they have likely moved onto greener pastures.

Three44s

[uscra112]

A common viewpoint, but in fact the machines do a far better job than humans can. There is plenty of critical thinking involved in setting up a machine to do the job we did. A typical engine block would consume 2000 hours or more just in programming the CMM, and that's on top of the thousands of hours expended programming the machine tools we were monitoring. The machine tool builders hated us - we told them "things they didn't know they didn't want to know". Good example: Ford had a terrible problem with head gaskets blowing in the V-6 engines used in the Winstar minivans. We (actually I personally) told them that the machining process they were using wasn't cutting the gasket face on the heads (we called it the "head deck") perfectly flat. The manual method of measuring flatness was incapable of detecting the flaw, but our machine could. (And I could tell them why. Critical thinking, enhanced by the CMM! But the machine tool builder fought Ford for two years before admitting that they had a problem. Big money involved.)

As for that turbine blowup. You would be amazed to learn the amount of gaging and non-destructive testing that goes into jet engine parts like that. We used to joke that "when the weight of the paperwork equaled the weight of the part, you could ship". They even keep "coupons" of the metal used, starting with the initial smelting from the ore. There's warehouses full of them, like the final scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark". X-rays, chemical analyses, surface finish measurements, contour measurements, it's almost endless. On the rare occasion when something doesn't get caught, they will figure out what happened from that data.

Bean counters do indeed give a ratsass about putting parts as nearly perfect as possible into our cars (and airplanes). Failures cost the mfgr in warranty repairs, and in the worst case kill people. Reputation suffers, sales fall, they close their doors. GM nearly put themselves out of business in the late '80s when they let a crooked V.P. of Logistics dictate buying low-grade cast iron for their engine blocks. Almost every engine they made with it was worn out by 100,000 miles. They did learn their lesson there. He got fired, the engineers dictated the grade of iron required instead of the purchasing dept., and things turned around. About that time they started looking around at how Germany and Japan managed to make better engines, and spent billions of $$ adopting the best practices, which included the automated machining and process control gaging that I was involved with.

It has been ever thus, since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Build the skill into the tool, and you get more and better product. Not that I don't love the old craft methods, as I said before, but they can't do what engineers like myself do (well, did, I'm retired), with automation. The critical thinking element is still there, it's just moved from the shop floor to the process engineers.

[cwheel]

I'm a third generation machinist in my family. Yes, I did invest $20,000 in tools and the education and trade school to be able to make a living at this trade. Yes, I'm not happy that it's not a choice that my grand son will have a option to make. But in retrospect, I made a good living, never had to look for a job much more than a couple of hours when unemployed to find a decent job. Overall, the trade has been good to me and that investment I made is returned to me in just the retirement benefits. I do have a small lathe and mill at home and continue to do small jobs to this day. The tools don't just gather dust. The only complaint I have is current US companies need a much higher return on their investment income and are unwilling to share it with their workers. ( read this as the middle class is shrinking big time) Guess my tools will sell well at the yard sale after I pass.
Chris