When it comes to guns, besides securing your guns, it's not far away from reloading. When reloading, you will precision measuring tools. Some of them are micrometers and calipers. But when do you actually use the micrometer and when to use the caliper? These questions may be easy to answer for advanced users. However, beginners may need more knowledge treatment. In this post, we are trying to cover some differences of micrometer and caliper.. These differences can help you understand micrometer and caliper's typical functions so that you know what to pick.
Here is the list of those things.
5 Differences Between Caliper and Micrometers
1. Speed: Which one is faster to use?
With different body parts designed, these two tools offer different way to use as well as different speed. When using caliper, you will only need to slide it in order to adjust the jaws with the item being clamped in between. On the other side, when you use micrometer, you will need to spin the rachet on the bottom to hold the object you are going to measure. Moving an inch with a caliper does not require as much effort as micrometer does. In addition, taking a measure with micrometer will need you to be careful with clamping the object in order to prevent it from getting too much pressure and broken. By reading the fact I just mentioned, I am certain you can conclude in an instant which one is relatively faster to use, which is caliper.
2. Measuring Range
Both micrometer and caliper offer different measuring ranges that are quite significant and makes each one of them equally crucial. Micrometer has much narrow measuring range compared to caliper, considering caliper’s lengthy body that looks like a ruler. On the other side, micrometer seems shorter with a C-frame body. In general, the measuring range of micrometer is 1”, while caliper offers measuring range up to 6”. However, nowadays there are different ranges of micrometer available that you can find easily, such as 0-1”, 1-2”, 2-3”, 3-4”, 4-4”, and 5-6”. You also can find other different options of caliper with measuring range such as 12”, 18”, 24”, even up to 40”.
3. Resolution (The smallest reading)
Despite its lack of speed and measuring range, apparently, micrometer offers much better resolution compared to caliper. Currently, you can find micrometer with resolution as much as 0.0001″, 0.00005″, or even 0.1 μm, while caliper only offers resolution up to 0.001”. But oftentimes, the micrometer with resolution of 0.00005” is much easier to be found and more apt to people’s needs.
Most people will firstly determine a particular aspect, such as thickness, diameter, or depth of an item using caliper, then they will use micrometer if there is any need for more accuracy, thanks to its extra specific resolution.
4. Functions
Equipped with different measuring ranges and resolutions, it is obvious that these two tools are used for different purposes too. When you want to measure both inside and outside diameter of an object, you will want to use caliper. This is because the caliper in common provides 4 jaws that allow it to measure the inside as well as an outside of an item at once with one single caliper. In addition, you can also calculate the depth of the object using caliper because it is featured with a stick that you can use to put into the object to see how much its depth is.
On the other side, micrometer can only be used to measure either an inside or an outside diameter. When you are trying to measure an inside and outside diameter of certain object using micrometer, you will have to prepare two of them. You can also measure the depth of an object using micrometer as well, but you obviously will need a separate tool for that.
5. Body Parts
When you use either a micrometer or caliper, you will need to clamp the item you wish to measure. Although both of them clamp the item, these two tools actually come in different shapes and bodies. Micrometer comes with a U or C-frame that allows it to measure cylinders, while the caliper is straight as a ruler with the scale on its sides.
In order to hold the measured object, a micrometer uses anvil and spindle. The anvil is usually flat, but you can find micrometers with other models of an anvil, such as tubular, ball, etc. On the other side, caliper generally offers 4 parts that can be used to clamp an object you want to measure, they are 2 internal and 2 external jaws that are flat and pointed, but you can find calipers with other shapes as well.
In terms of giving consistent pressure to the measured item, micrometer has the ratchet driver at the bottom end of its body that you can rotate to allow the spindle to move accordingly, adjusting itself with the item you desire to measure. Instead, the caliper has a part called a thumb scroll that you can simply roll on so that its jaws can clamp the item steadily.
The part of the micrometer that gives a display of the scale is the thimble and barrel. Thimble is the one you can rotate with 50 equal divisions around its perimeter and each division’s value equals 0.01 mm. The barrel, on the other hand, is marked in 0.5 mm divisions. Digital micrometers are sometimes provided with either a thimble scale or none.
Compared with the caliper, either the vernier, dial, or digital provides a scale that is connected to its jaws and slides together.
Conclusion
Measuring components of a machine is crucial to make sure that it is supported by the exact size of components. Those who work in workshops, metal industries, or stuff related to machinery and engineering must be very familiar with micrometer and caliper, which are the linear measuring tools.
There are several types of micrometer, such as outside micrometer, inside micrometer, micrometer depth gauge, bench micrometer, and the special purpose micrometer, which consists of screw thread micrometer, vee-anvil micrometer, and thickness micrometer. There are also a variety of caliper, namely inside caliper, outside caliper, divider caliper, oddleg caliper, vernier caliper, dial caliper, and digital caliper that work with their own functions respectively. In this article, I only refer to the outside micrometer and vernier micrometer in general.
Although both of these tools have the same function which is to measure items such as screw, cable, etc. that requires high precision, there are several key things that make them different from each other. Gratefully, we have covered the differences in this post. For further reading, you may want to check out the source of information that is behind this post crafting.
