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Measurement Terminology

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ieezitin:
Hello homebrewer,

ill be brief.. you can take up a machining hobby in your apartment  an example would be a watch / clock maker could fit his machines and tooling in the corner of a bedroom you have.

I am an ex-patriot from England living here in the states now for 25 years yet for all of this time its always perplexed me that Americans always say they don't understand the metric system yet their currency is.

It was my career that brought me here I am in the construction & engineering side of oil refineries that are still heavily entrenched in the Kings system on a global scale, yet when i interact with highly skilled and educated engineers they all piss and moan on cross referencing metric to imperial… they even say they don't get it.. To me it's just being lazy after all they had to pass the math test to get the diploma, I think this is mainly the largest reason why the US is one of only a handful of nations not on the metric system.

It's all about standards and there is two used throughout the world understanding them both just takes the understanding why they exist, I believe the metric system format is broader because it covers more disciplines yet the kings is still widely used as they are tied to the world's largest industries mainly the largest which is mining and agriculture Hence the United States stalwart clinging on to the Kings. .
 
Liters, meters, microns fit into disciplines heavily studied after the mid 17th century, weights, volume, horsepower were all prevalent before plus some of the greats designed the structure as they were born in this era. If you notice too both systems were derived by two nations heavily involved in world imperialism France and England.
 
Saying all that I boil and render it down simply as this... both systems have one common denominator “ excuse the pun” shared by both, they use the same universal  language math.. Its secret is understanding one thing the decimal point.. Comprehension of this tiny little speck makes you a master in both systems.
 
Hope this helps clear things up..
 
Anthony.

... Homebrew. i don't want you to think i took what you wrote as you are pissing and moaning, I did not mean this in my statement i was generalizing... just wanted to clear this up..

Anthony.

vtsteam:

--- Quote from: ieezitin on June 24, 2017, 01:21:27 PM --- its always perplexed me that Americans always say they don't understand the metric system.....
......when i interact with highly skilled and educated engineers they all piss and moan on cross referencing metric to imperial… they even say they don't get it.. To me it's just being lazy after all they had to pass the math test to get the diploma, I think this is mainly the largest reason why the US is one of only a handful of nations not on the metric system.
--- End quote ---

Americans always....
engineers all....
piss and moan.....
lazy......

This road is about 1 meter long. In other words, a short one. Might be best not to start down it.

Lew_Merrick_PE:
i admit that I hate the "unit" the Newton and all "units" that derive from it!  However, having purchased a large and expensive set of sub-micron micrometers and dial indicators in 1968, I was burned by the 1969 redefinition of the metre.  The changeover from Centigrade to Celsius of the early-1970's (not being certain of the year) to change 0°C for the "improved" triple-point of water also affected me.

As the senior mechanical design engineer on the program the developed automotive airbag restraint systems, it was the engineers from Japan and Germany who had the most problem with exploding inflators because of the rapid change in units across Pascal (pressure) measurement!  American engineers using psi had virtually no such problem.  I forget which year it was, but we crashed a "Mars probe" because the ESA assumed that accelerations were measured in m/sec˛ rather than gravitles (the "standard" since Goddard's day).

When I do work for German agencies and companies, the use of kgf is required.

tom osselton:
 I remember that mars probe.... A lot of coin just to make a pancake! But that is why we have the lowest bidder right? From what I remember both Canada and the USA were changing to metric at the same time but the Americans thought it was too costly to change all the signage. Course I could be wrong its what I was told. There also wasn't much metric in school either I think we had a couple of weeks of it.

PekkaNF:
Metric or imperial? Best system is what you are used to. I'm from Finland and we are metric to the core.

However, much of the old (farming) stuff was british (with their withworth thread and imperial units, some stuff was american (UNF/UNC bolts and their understanding of imperial unis). Some tractors hand mixed fasteeteners. Tire /Wheel size is still mixture of the unists like 15" rim and rest in metric.

Building boards were metric as far as I can remember, but I remember when lumber was defined often in incehes like 2x4". Coarse units seem to work well on rough work.

We used to make some machine in imperial dimenssions for american market. It was a mess, materials had to be imperial or there was waste, some sizes were easy to adjust, some not. But engineers can do bolt paterns and use prefered size tables withhout moaning. We stoped doing them when american buyers stopeed insisting on them.

Best part was one canadian customer, we delivered there a proction line, metric off sourse. They had some imperial stuff and delivered nearly half their production to USA (some in metric dimenssions and some not). We have pretty mutch math and program in the PLC and then a user interface to control the procutiont. We can scale the user intercase to foreign unist/accuracy. They wanted one dimenssion input in inches and all the others in metric - all resuslts had to be shown in in metric (mill computers and information system was metric so were the orders, imperila units were on "info field"). The the system was build to certan accuracy and display reflected that. They took the metric display as a gospel, but said that the inches looks like they have way too many digits.....although they were correct and accurate conversion.

I don't use imperila units, I convert them. I have an idea what bolt sizes and AF are, I still have set of imperila tools, left from couple of yeras for maintaing my Harley (1984 late model FXST). BUT if i need to something for a hobby building I try to find metric drawing and if the fails, I'll do a doodle that has inch/mm main dimenssions and see how that needs to be adjusted on metric material and thread sizes. I much prefer German drawings, not only because they are metric, but also the materials make sense to me and find them easier to read.

This is my history, everybody has a diferrent story.

Pekka

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