Warning: Your scale calibration might be way off if you don't check this one thing

I was at a shop in Detroit last month helping a buddy with his drafting table setup. He kept complaining his measurements were off by about 1/8 inch on every drawing. Turns out he never zeroed his scale after dropping it on concrete. I checked mine at home and it was off by 0.5mm too. Have any of you ever run into this or do you just assume your tools are always right?

2 comments

2 Comments

patricialee28d ago

A 1/8 inch error on a drafting scale is more like 3.175 mm, not 0.5. 0.5 mm is a tiny fraction of that. If your scale was off by 0.5 mm that's actually pretty normal for a metal ruler that's been dropped once or twice. The bigger issue is most people don't even think to check their tools against a known standard like a machinist's ruler or a caliper. I keep an old steel ruler that's never been dropped just for checking everything else. I think you'd be surprised how many tools leave the factory with a slight error that nobody catches because it's small enough to pass inspection.

zaram9728d ago

Gotta disagree @patricialee, 0.5mm error is still unacceptable for precision work.