Ivan Vegvary wrote:
"Trevor Jones" wrote in message
news:tzlHi.55419$bO6.18635@edtnps89...

Ivan Vegvary wrote:



Ed, thanks for the insight. I do agree that most machining can be done
in inches and decimal parts thereof. However, at some point you still
have to reach for a drill and get involved with fractions and letter
designations. That part of the process could use some improvement. Why
don't they simply make/package drills in decimal inches?

Ivan Vegvary

Your drill indexes and wall charts do not list decimal sizes?

The three indexes in my tool box, all have the decimal equivalent on
them. The wall chart I use most, has a list of all the "normal" drills in
decimal inch, as well as decimal mm from smallest to largest, showing the
sequence of sizes, of normally stocked drills in the 4 systems that we use
(number, letter fraction, metric).

I am pretty sure we could ****can the whole thing, if we just stocked the
metric sizes in tenths all the way up to, say 25mm, but there would be a
lot that never got used, eh!

Cheers
Trevor Jones


Thanks Trevor,
I have all the charts and indexes. Since a 64th is approximately 15 thou
why don't we simply label drills in increments of either ten thousandths or
15 thousandths. It would eliminate all of the charts.

Ivan Vegvary



We could, and then we would need charts and indexes that told us which
one was the one that matched up with the required hole size, esp when
dealing with legacy standards. That would also leave out a pile of sizes
that would not fit nicely into the spacing, sorta like why we have
number and letter sizes, instead of just 64ths or 128ths fractional sets.

Making a law that "Thou sall be Metric henceforth!!) did not change
any of the stuff that was already in place. Houses built to inch
dimensions will be around for a while yet. The land survey of Canada (at
least the prairies) is laid out in neat 1 mile by 2 mile grids.
Etcetera, etcetera, ad nauseum. (my latin for the day!:-))

Canada tried that. Metric by decree. Then they found that, in order to
be of any use at all, civil engineers, for example, had to be able to
read the drawings that were done 100 or so years back, and make sense of
them, so they started teaching both systems again. I can buy a
yardstick, if I want to!!



If I get the ghist of it right, that was the intent of the metric
system in the first place, to reduce the number of systems in use. It
just added another.

Cheers
Trevor Jones