I was not aware that braille micrometers existed. I just wanted to
contribute a few "idea seeds". None of them would be easy and maybe not
doable with current technology - but one of the input criteria was a
challenge. And if you are going to go to all that trouble, then stretch and
do something new and maybe useful to the world. I think the TDR idea might
be especially useful for some specialized tasks (hell, they might already
exist too).

As a side note I wasn't suggesting that anyone put themselves in a dangerous
situation. I didn't even consider blind machinists - machinists are not the
only ones that use micrometers.

Bruce

"Mike" * wrote in message
...
Blind machinists are out there. Although I have never seen or heard a
talking micrometer, there are braille micrometers available. This I
know because I am blind. Although I do not currently do any machine
work, I want to. I rebuild car engines and just now have started
looking in to model engines.

Mike




On Wed, 17 Sep 2003 16:25:01 +0100, Alaric B Snell
wrote:

Bruce C. wrote:
Couple of ideas from outside the box:
1. Put a GPS reciever in the anvil and another one in the screw. Feed
the
signals to a PC to compute the diference.

Uh, not the easiest approach. Although you could do differential
decoding to find the distance between the two points accurately despite
GPS not giving you *absolute* positions very accurately, it still
wouldn't be *very* accurate, and it'd be bloody complex!

2. Use an ultrasonic transducer coupled to something like a Time Domain
Reflectometer (TDR). Now you can read the thickness without having
access to
the other side. Or maybe you can read the thickness of an anodize
treatment.

Might be interesting to develop a micro-radar or micro-sonar where the
sensor head transmits pulses and then you use an oscilloscope to view
the reflected signal as it comes in - the further down it's looking the
longer the echo took so the further along the scale the point has moved.
Once it was calibrated, you could put it on a surface and see things
like the actual far surface, but also things like the layer of solder
within a braze joint, etc.

I also like the "talking micrometer" already mentioned. How about a
micrometer that reads out in braile?

Erm... yes, but how many blind machinists are there? It doesn't sound
like an easy profession for the partially sighted to me. Having to put
your fingers into the lathe to see where the tool was doesn't sound very
safe. Although you could doodle on things with an automatic centre punch
- braille graffiti!


Bruce


ABS