Do you guys ever drive your friends crazy??

[dirtcrasher]

I'm not sure if I can even consider myself a true "machinist" but, I turned things, milled things and they all worked better than the stuff my "maintenance dep't manager" made

Anyhow, I use decimal points all the time. It seems to drive people crazy! I just find them quick and also easy to divide in half quickly but no one else shares my thoughts. I'm a sheet metal worker now and even on paper, I find it easier to write .93 than 15/16ths, no one seems to even be capable of finding dimensions within .0625 anyhow

I drive these guys nuts.... I laid out holes for hanging a 23' hood last week for a Bar Louie, I wrote down 6.5625, 20.9375 and on and on and the 3 guys that work with me were lost. To me it was simple...

Even with heights, I find our 1' = 12" so frustrating for some people so I try to force them to use inches and then convert it back. If I need them to take 14" 's off of 12' 2" 's I just ask them what 146 minus 14 is and then they pull out 12' of a tape measure until the figure it out.

Maybe it's just me!!

[mechanicalmagic]

It's not just you.

My good friend, a Physicist, is very comfortable using powers of ten for discussions of Energy, Science and other topics.

EXCEPT for woodworking, he has a caliper that provides fractions, since that's the unit of measure for wood. He has no idea if .500 = 1/2 or 1/2000.

Drives me FREAKING NUTS. The man is weird.

OUTLAW fractions.

Dave J.

[JoeBlake.]

Yep.....go decimal metric rules..................

[Jose Rivera]

Sounds like you do things right and they do it just to get the job done and out of the way.

Things done right ALWAYS fit.

The difference here is what I can describe a craftsman and a wanna-be, better know as sloppy, the ones I never wanted to learn nothing from them.

Harder to clean up being sloppy that leaning to do it clean. Once you do it right things seem to just shine.

[Steve_in_Mich]

Decimal numbers without units is sort of meaningless. On the other hand a glass half full conveys the point better than a glass filled to 3.12675". And 0.5 full doesn't get it either.

BTW, hand me the 0.96875 inch socket of either 0.500 inch or 0.750 inch drive from the box. Don't mess with my sockets.

I suppose when you tell someone 'where to go' it will be in polar coordinates. No I didn't mean due South.

Some guys talk in mm's and I nod politely. If it really sounds important I'll do the times 0.04 to get close to a more meaningful number of inches.

It's 2:00 AM I think I've said enough.

[J. Randall]

If you are working with sheet metal where everyone else uses a tape measure and feet, inches and fractions are accurate enough, then I don't blame them a bit. Sounds like you are just making it confusing. Just because it comes easy to you doesn't mean it does to them.
James

[Jose Rivera]

Decimal numbers without units is sort of meaningless. On the other hand a glass half full conveys the point better than a glass filled to 3.12675". And 0.5 full doesn't get it either.

I took some time asking members of chaski that live and work in Europe and England.
I was curious that if they where 100% metric would they still use fraction.
Their answer was that THEY DO

Did someone said "Outlaw fractions" ?

I have been working with metric on this reverse engineering job.
Not fun, but I am starting to get to know the metric system better.

I still not find it better or more accurate as someone commented a while ago.
Strange to see that the second decimal place (.01 mm) is actually almost .0004"
That still does not make it "More Accurate", the operator does.

Still have to see a metric mic that goes beyond the .00 mm, like the .0001" mics. I am sure there are out there.

[Bill Shields]

the entire rest of the world laughs at us and our stupid measurement system....and why shouldn't they? There is nothing more idiotic than dividing by 8 (or multiples thereof)....or 12 to a foot. How dumb is that?

To that end....

20 years ago, when my wife had just completed here Real Estate Agent certification (yes, surprised me too...), I purchased her a graduation present - an oversize tape measure that she could use to determine room sizes.

Naturally, I got her an engineer's tape that was in FEET and 10'ths of a FOOT, not inches.

Not being terribly strong in math (which is why her RE agent choice surprised me), it took her about 2 weeks to realize that there was something really strange about this tape.

I now have it in my shop....


Jose:

Most Starrett metric mics are 0.001 mm graduations - I have several mechanical types.

[BK]

After all these years I only discovered Decimal inches after I bought my lathe, how I survived all those years with fractions is beyond me, makes life so much easier.
I was leaning t'wards metric for that reason, but not now, with the conversion chart on the wall, everything is easy.

BK

[Rick]

Disclaimer: I am not putting anyone down here, I understand that people use the methods and tools they need for the job they do. There is a bunch of professions that use math but don’t need decimals, factions are just fine or as mentioned earlier power of 10. For fractions housing construction comes to mind. BUT I like to mess with people at times and my world is in 1/1000’s so I run with that. I also have a couple of things that make me nuts. So just ignore my rants and raves.

A mechanically inclined acquaintance of mine knowing I had a saw asked me to cut some steel bar for him. I asked how close to the dim he provided did he need; his response was he was not sure. Just to see what would happen I then asked if +/- 250 thousands would be close enough and he responded by saying that he didn’t need it that close that if it was within an 1/8 of an inch it would be fine. I just said OK 1/8 is what we will use.

It baffles me sometimes at the lack of math skills in this country. I mean out monetary system is based on the decimal system, so I would assume everyone would have a basic understanding of the decimal system.

We have hired guys that have been through machining classes at a school and some can’t even divide. And don’t even get me started on some of the graduates from our more prestigious Engineering Universities. I know some people can be “educated beyond their intelligence” but what scares me most is what classes you DON’T have to have to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. We work with a couple of Professors and a few Graduate students from the local Engineering University and the lack of basic mechanical aptitude is just amazing. Blows my mind!

Sorry for the venting but I feel a little better at least for this morning.

Rick

[pat1027]

Quite the opposite. Fractional dimensions drive me crazy. Working base 2, 4, 8, 16 etc numbers in the same drawing to me a headache. Decimal or metric is so mych easier.

[GearGeek]

I have driven a few people nuts. I am used to saying tenths to mean .0001 but if you say tenths to a math person they seem to think .1 . Obviously this makes sense because when we say tenths it is usually short for ten thousandths but I forget sometimes that not everyone makes that correlation.

Some people also get tripped up with 'hundred thou' for some reason. I think this one is more explicit to mean .1 but some think of it as .01. I guess most people just are not used to thinking of dimensions in terms of thousandths.

It's all what your used to I guess I also prefer decimal to fractional notation. Most of the time (unless it is a fairly common fraction) I just convert it. Metric I also have to convert back to inches.

~GearGeek