Decimal equivalents chart

[rohart]

I make frequent use of the little Zeus data charts booklet. The first two pages have very good decimal equivalents, but there is, to my mind, one glaring omission. They do not provide the decimal values for imperial fractional sizes. Possibly this is because one extra decimal place would be required over and above the other values. Who knows.

Anyway, I spent a few hours in front of spreadsheet software, and I came up with some replacements which you are welcome to use, print, hang on the wall etc. PM me if you find any errors - this data had to be put through a few hoops !


These are the original 3 columns per page, covering 0" to 1":

http://rohart.org.uk/shopdata/zeusdec1.pdf

http://rohart.org.uk/shopdata/zeusdec2.pdf

These are 4 column versions, covering 0" to 1" and 1" to 4":

http://rohart.org.uk/shopdata/zeusdec3.pdf

http://rohart.org.uk/shopdata/zeusdec4.pdf

[duckman]

I've done it the hard way before, this is easier, but when I printed it , it came out at about size 4 way to hard to see, will need my optivisor to read it.

[+ or - Zero]

Very nice Richard, very nice indeed. Thanks for this!

[MichaelP]

Thank you Richard.

[herbet999]

I currently use some manufacture's cheat cards that are very small and hard to read. These will be a nice alternative. Thanks.

[Peter.]

Very nice, but could you add some column headers please.

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

Yet again a good indication why the imperial system sucks - charts needed even for simple things.

[CCWKen]

Yet again a good indication why the imperial system sucks - charts needed even for simple things.

For your information and suck as it may, the imperial system came from Europe. It still works here and the only time problems come up is when we have to talk to you foreigners.

[+ or - Zero]

For your information and suck as it may, the imperial system came from Europe. It still works here and the only time problems come up is when we have to talk to you foreigners.

Oh God, do I wish there was a way to mod you up!

[dave5605]

I have this 'decimal equivalent wall chart' a whole $4 US dollars. 22"x32" in size. Goes all the way from #80 drill to 1". Bottom of page.

http://www.use-enco.com/CGI/INPDFF?PMPAGE=369&PARTPG=INLMK3&PMITEM=327-0057

[Jaakko Fagerlund]

For your information and suck as it may, the imperial system came from Europe. It still works here and the only time problems come up is when we have to talk to you foreigners.

To be exact, it came from England, which is the only place left to use it somewhat. Just looking at a world map of metric vs. imperial countries tells the story well.

[CCWKen]

To be exact, it came from England, which is the only place left to use it somewhat. Just looking at a world map of metric vs. imperial countries tells the story well.

To be MORE exact, it came from Italy and France. The English adopted it so they could count past five. (The other hand was always in their pants.)

Who cares about a World map? I am where I am. If metric is such a grand form of measurement, why is everyone still using Troy Ounces for precious metals?

[Bill736]

I can recall a number of years ago, when the term " hertz" came to replace the term " cycles per second." A friend carefully and painstakingly created an extensive conversion chart that not only converted " cycles per second" to " hertz", but also "hertz" back to " cycles per second".

[rohart]

Peter - This first effort was just to replicate the Zeus pages. When I finished I thought of extending it trying to keep it to three columns on two pages, to cover imperial fractions only, in 1/8ths, say, up to 3" or 4". I still might do that.

But what would I use as the column headers ? To be sensible, they would have to be obvious break points, like 0 to 3mm, or 15mm to 25mm, but those points are not easy to find, as the increments increase across the piece. And if I were to make the contents of a column fit a sensible heading the columns would have a variable number of rows, and it would start looking messy again.

duckman - when I print it, it comes out as A4 pages, and I find that quite reasonable to read. I'm hanging it on the wall behind the lathe, so 3ft away. If you enlarge the pdf page on screen you can see how much detail is there if it's needed. You could print it larger if you had a good pdf reader that let you select areas and save them to bmps, print them up and then physically paste. I only have PDFlite, so I can't test that out.

[bob ward]

Even though I usually machine in metric I've always admired the way that imperial machinists can regularly and reliably achieve much greater precision than their metric cousins.

Take drill bits for instance, someone using a 9/64 bit is drilling a hole .140625", ie they are working to millionths of an inch. Most metric machinists reckon they are going pretty well if they can get within .005mm of a size, ie down to 2 tenthousandths of an an inch. That makes even the beginner imperial machinist 200 times more accurate than an experienced metric machinist.