Nytrunner
Pop lugs, not drugs
X kgf-m * (2.2 lb/kgf) * (3.28 ft/m)
haha..
I'm Canadian, so I'm versed in metric. But pretty much everywhere I've worked has to deal with the American Supplier & Consumer, so we work in 'standard' / imperial. So, I'm pretty ambidextrous in regards to linear measurements.
Metric is easier, as it's all base 10. Imperial differs depending on the unit of measure.
if you look up "who uses imperial" you'll see that only the US, Burma & Liberia use the imperial system. The rest of the planet is SI or DIN standards.
But, while the US did try to change over to metric, there was much resistance and it was soon dropped for whatever reason..
The US also have a love of unique [archaic] 'systems': Sheet steel gauge, wrought iron gauge, pipe dia & sizing, AWG, etc.. While a 'number' is assigned, it has no relevance to its actual size. Look at a standard 1/4" pipe (not a tube). Neither the ID or the OD are 1/4"!
You've taken a machine shop running in inch and moved to metric? Can I ask what was changed, and what benefits you've seen?I lived through it, so I know first hand that it's not easy. I will add that on top of being expensive, it is frustrating; at least it was for me for many, many years. However, it's doable and overdue.
My response to that always is, SO WHAT??? Why should the U.S. feel a need to follow the rest of the world?? We shouldn't do it with our health care system, we shouldn't do it with our immigration laws, why should we do it with our standards and measurements systems??
When someone says they need a 7/16 wrench, I know without needing to think about it what that means. So the metric system is NOT easier.
I just got a set of SAE/Metric hex keys from Sears in the "switchblade" package. They're held together with hex key fasteners, and the one on the metric set is a little loose... turns out that the screw is metric, so I don't have a hex key to tighten it unless I buy/borrow one. Gotta love it...
Fun fact: Imperial units are based on metric units. The inch is now defined as exactly 2.54 cm; the pound (mass) is defined in terms of the kilogram (which used to be a platinum-iridium cylinder)
My response to that always is, SO WHAT??? Why should the U.S. feel a need to follow the rest of the world?? We shouldn't do it with our health care system, we shouldn't do it with our immigration laws, why should we do it with our standards and measurements systems??
When someone says they need a 7/16 wrench, I know without needing to think about it what that means. So the metric system is NOT easier.
You've taken a machine shop running in inch and moved to metric? Can I ask what was changed, and what benefits you've seen?
I run our in house machine shop, and we're still relatively small. If swapping over were to make sense, the time to do so would be now as we're growing pretty rapidly. I haven't run into issues yet working in inch, so I haven't had a reason to change anything. That said, if you're willing, I'd like to gain some insight on what was gained and what pushed you to make the change. Thanks!
Every measurement has to be based on some sort of standard. There are seven base units, for length, mass, time, temperature, amount of substance, electric current, and luminous intensity (metre, kilogram, second, kelvin, mole, ampere, and candela).** At one time some of these were based on a physical object; now they're all based on some sort of physical phenomenon that can be reproduced by anyone with the proper equipment and knowledge. The second is defined in terms of the vibrations of some atom, I forget which.Can you elaborate?
Yeah, I interpreted it as a response to my post mentioning the financial issues of swapping in a production environment. Moving from one unit personally is quite a long way from bailing on a ton of tooling. I don't understand how having to convert something is a negative over intuitively understanding it. If it's important enough to have a need to be accurately quantified, I sure as hell don't want someone doing conversions in their head. I've got a calculator and a note pad on me at work, and that seems to work out pretty well. I don't think I've ever looked at something that mattered and thought "that looks about X inches, good enough". I try to make it a point to verify things in imperial as well. What's a minute or two when you're working on equipment that's worth thousands (if not more) of dollars?I think you misunderstood my comment.
I have never been involved in the migration process at a business or institution level. I was speaking from my expeince as someone who was effectively "programmed" in one unit of measure then forced to learn and try to think in another. It was frustrating, and for me, it took a very long time, literally decades to be able to "natively" think in Metric. I always did the conversion in my head or on paper to visualize what I was measuring.
I will argue that this is beyond one person or even a generation and that I take the long term view of it being the greater good for humanity. If anyone needs "proof" that there is an advantage of everyone on the planet being on a single standard unit of measure, then I don't know what to say except common sense should prevail.
To put some perspective on this, below are some copy paste points from a quick Google. These are just random searches and in no particular order of importance or relevance. I am not standing behind the accuracy of any specific point, nor do I want to argue the validity of any of them. The point is that the list of mistakes and issues presented is long and shows no signs of going away anytime soon.
- Consumers have difficulty in comparing prices (and hence value for money) when rival traders quote prices in different measures – for example if one trader’s prices are in $/kg and the neighbouring trader quotes in $/lb. Dual pricing (e.g. per kg and per lb) increases costs for manufacturers and causes unnecessary work for retailers – especially small shopkeepers and market traders who may have to change prices frequently by hand. These costs are ultimately borne by the consumer. Similarly, the marking of package sizes in both metric and imperial has a cost implication.
- Misunderstandings, mistakes and disputes can occur when parties to a transaction use different units of measurement. (The 1999 failure of the Mars Climate Orbiter space probe at a cost of $125 million is the best known and most spectacular example.)
- Much teaching of metric to schoolchildren is wasted since they have little opportunity to practise their skills outside school. When children leave school, they have to adapt to the imperial system, which they have not been formally taught. Many soon forget what they learnt at school yet have an imperfect grasp of and no ability to calculate in imperial measures. This could have serious consequences down the road.
- The emphasis on conversions (from metric to imperial and vice versa) inhibits people from thinking easily and consistently in a single system. People who use metric at work constantly have to adjust to the imperial environment outside the workplace.
- Standard derived measures, such as fuel consumption in miles per gallon or in litres per 100 kilometres, cannot easily be calculated when a mixture of units (litres and miles) is used.
- Ro ad contractors have to convert metric design distances into imperial for signage with consequent costs and potential for error.
- People purchasing properties have to do extensive conversions from metric to imperial and vice versa if they wish to estimate the costs of renovations.
- NASA lost equipment worth millions thanks to shoddy conversion practices. SOHO, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project between NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency), lost all communications with Earth. After about a week of trying various things, communication was restored and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Among the problems thought to have caused the sudden blackout? There was an error in the spacecraft’s navigation measurements of nearly 100 km, which resulted in a much lower altitude than expected and led to the vehicle’s break-up in the atmosphere. The conversion factor from English to Metric units was erroneously left out of the AMD files. Interface Specification required that the impulse-bit calculations should be done using Metric Units.
- In 1983, an Air Canada plane ran out of fuel in the middle of a flight. The cause? Not one but two mistakes in figuring how much fuel was needed. It was Air Canada’s first plane to use metric measurements, and clearly, not everyone had the hang of it yet. Luckily, no one was killed and only two people received minor injuries. That’s amazing considering the flight crew thought they had double the fuel they actually had.
- In 1999, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices reported an instance where a patient had received 0.5 grams of Phenobarbital (a sedative) instead of 0.5 grains when the recommendation was misread. A grain is a unit of measure equal to about 0.065 grams… yikes. The Institute emphasized that only the metric system should be used for prescribing drugs.
- An aircraft more than 30,000 pounds overweight is certainly no laughing matter. In 1994, the FAA received an anonymous tip that an American International Airways (now Kalitta Air, a cargo airline) flight had landed 15 tons heavier than it should have. The FAA investigated and discovered that the problem was in a kilogram-to-pounds conversion (or lack thereof).
- Even Columbus had conversion problems. He miscalculated the circumference of the earth when he used Roman miles instead of nautical miles, which is part of the reason he unexpectedly ended up in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, and assumed he had hit Asia. Whoops.
- Power output of different appliances cannot be compared when some (e.g. central heating boilers) are expressed in “British thermal units” (BTUs) and others (such as electric heaters) are expressed in kilowatts
- Visitors are confused by the inconsistent mixture of measures used.
I'll start this since part of this discussion is clogging up the funny thread. As a mechanic for a company that's global (New Holland Construction), I have to deal with this all the time. Heck, some machines have metric and standard (our term for Imperial) on the same unit. NH engines are all made by a Fiat conglomerate, so they're all metric; mostly... I just had the exhaust manifold off an engine. The studs were definitely metric, but the external size was 7/16" or 11 mm. Both fit fine. In fact, I'm not sure, but I think the 7/16" fit better. Now we used to have 13mm and 19mm wrench sizes in a lot of the hardware. Now a lot of it is 15mm and 18mm wrench size. All the manuals give metric specs first and standard in ().
Torque is the biggest PITA. Mostly it's in newton meters which are .74 ft lbs. But I did have one that was kg force meter. Converting that was a REAL PITA...
I don't buy your argument that if someone asks you for a 7/16" wrench you know what that means. it's just a wrench sized to fit over a 7/16" bolt or nut (it's actually the standard for a 1/4" nut or bolt..) I could ask you for a 17mm wrench, and you just go and pull out the 17mm wrench and hand it to me.. I could also say, hand me the pink wrench, as I know that's a 9/16" wrench..
I don't really care if you buy my argument or not. When someone says an item (I don't care if its a hex nut or a popsicle stick) is 7/16" or 1/2" I know exactly what that means. When someone says 3.5 mm I have no idea how big an item that is.
If the speed limit is 65 mph, that makes sense to me. If they say the speed limit is 104.6 kph, I say "What? Tell me what it is in MPH!!"
This post is a little ambiguous as to which side of the fence you are on. Personally I am on the metric side, but I can switch to imperial when necessary without much effort. FWIW I always design and work in metric except where convention has imperial, but I have a selection of metric and imperial tools (taps, dies, spanners, micrometers etc). The lathe and mill (with DROs) are metric, and I have never bothered to look where the "inch" button is.Metric. Learn to convert to be left behind.
,...nor do I want to argue the validity of any of them. The point is that the list of mistakes and issues presented is long and shows no signs of going away anytime soon...
- NASA lost equipment worth millions thanks to shoddy conversion practices. SOHO, the Solar Heliospheric Observatory, a joint project between NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency), lost all communications with Earth. After about a week of trying various things, communication was restored and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. Among the problems thought to have caused the sudden blackout? There was an error in the spacecraft’s navigation measurements of nearly 100 km, which resulted in a much lower altitude than expected and led to the vehicle’s break-up in the atmosphere. The conversion factor from English to Metric units was erroneously left out of the AMD files. Interface Specification required that the impulse-bit calculations should be done using Metric Units.
- Even Columbus had conversion problems. He miscalculated the circumference of the earth when he used Roman miles instead of nautical miles, which is part of the reason he unexpectedly ended up in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, and assumed he had hit Asia. Whoops.
I understand that you don't want to argue the validity of any of these points -- but the first one quoted seems to be claim that a conversion error dropped SOHO into the atmosphere -- which I think would be a surprise to the folks running it. I guess who ever compiled the points to which you googled used somebody's much forwarded inbox glurge that concatenated the SOHO story with the Mars Climate Orbiter story.
As for the Columbus story -- it is way more complicated than that (upthread I mentioned The Catalog of Shipwrecked Books -- my copy is down to just about 6mm unread now, and is still holding my attention).
https://smbc-comics.com/comic/pood
The reason I said I didn't want to argue those points was, number one I didn't do any fact checking, however it wasn't required to make my point. If your intention is to focus on, and point out factual errors, in your gotya moment, then I am afraid that you missed the point.
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