Just go to the US patent website and look it up.
Karl

"Joseph Gwinn" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Don Foreman wrote:

Mitutoyo uses a really ingenious scheme for absolute position reading
of their digital calipers. Google it if interested. It's explained
(in patentese) in a patent assigned to Mitutoyo. I think the HF
calipers may have ripped that off, don't recall when Mitutoyo's U.S.
patent was dated. I think the HF digital calipers, at $16.99 on
sale, are an incredibly good buy. I have both HF and Mitutoyo and I
see no difference in accuracy, function, feel or finish between
them.

The patent number is 6,005,387, according to the back of my Mitutoyo
CD-8"PS.

To get a pdf copy of the patent, go to http://www.pat2pdf.org.

No gray codes are involved. It's an incremental encoder, and measures
distance from the last zeroing.

Joe Gwinn