My Cautionary Tale Of Woe: I bought a new Mitutoyo micrometer, one of their top of the line coolant proof models. This was intended to be my "best" handheld measuring tool. I didn't need it for a long time and the original battery was dead when I checked it so I replaced the battery with a Maxell battery I purchased on eBay. That battery claimed to be a silver oxide battery but was a low quality alkaline battery. It leaked and ruined the micrometer before I ever had a chance to use it. Mitutoyo wants $85 plus shipping to repair it.
I now order authentic batteries for digital measuring tools from McMaster-Carr. That's where I order the measuring tools themselves, because there are a lot of cheap clones on eBay and Amazon and they've learned to maximize sales (and profit!) by pricing their Mitutoyo clones just below the cost of the genuine article. Buyers know that $30 "Mitutoyo" calipers are fake, but $89 "Mitutoyo" digital calipers look like a good deal. However, there are some Chinese manufactured Fluke digital multimeters on eBay and (I think) Amazon that are the real deal, and they're only slightly more expensive than the cheap DMMs. Some even have English and Chinese manuals, even though these were designed for the Chinese market and Fluke doesn't warranty them outside of China. I recently needed some inexpensive digital calipers for my ammunition reloading hobby because I was always worried about my good Mitutoyo calipers banging around on the reloading bench. I bought six inch iGaging digital calipers and they're very nice. Not quite Mitutoyo quality, but nice. They seemed a bit gritty, but ten slides back and forth and they're almost as smooth as the Mitu at a quarter the price. They also have a huge LCD which my older eyes love. I liked them so much that I'm buying another to use for daily shop work to save my good Mitutoyo calipers for when I really need them (to impress the real machinists who might watch my home gamer YouTube machining videos). I bought a 4" digital caliper for mobile use and they're fairly nice too. Both correspond exactly to my Mitutoyo calipers when measuring. From what I've seen, there is a lot of difference between the $15 digital calipers and the $25 digital calipers, and it's worth spending a little more to get a lot more. The Amazon customer reviews can separate the goats from the sheep, if you discount all the paid reviews that now plague Amazon. 6" iGaging Calipers ($34 when I just looked but were $28 when I bought them a couple of weeks ago) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001AQEZ2W 4" iKKEGOL Calipers https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00X6UKXIA Caveat emptor! On 10/31/2016 08:58 AM, Dave Caroline wrote: > I have a real Mitutoyo and have had intermittent problems recently, it > turned out to be the lower battery contact has a small crater with the > under lying corrosion pushing upwards stopping proper contact > (probably from a leaky battery at some time), a rejig of the spring > contact has fixed it. > > Dave Caroline > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Command Line: Reinvented for Modern Developers Did the resurgence of CLI tooling catch you by surprise? Reconnect with the command line and become more productive. Learn the new .NET and ASP.NET CLI. Get your free copy! http://sdm.link/telerik _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
