Thread Identifier Caddy

[Charron63]

Joe PIE is the bomb isn't he? I have watched nearly all of his vids

[Paul Jones]

I finally finished my metric thread identification caddy. I didn't have the M2.5-0.45 and the M3-0.5 gages and made these from 12L14 steel.



The machining was very easy using taps and dies to make the thread gages.



I used a P-Touch labeller for thread gage ID but had to use contact cement to permanently attach the clear labels.


Thank you for looking,
PaulJones

[mklotz]

Whenever I buy a new tap/die set (I usually buy the two together), I use them to make a screw and nut sample to keep in the pill bottle with the tap/die. This provides me gauges for testing threads produced later with the tools as well as identifiers for unknown threads. I thoroughly recommend this habit.

Despite having both inferial and metric thread checkers, for some reason it never occurred to me to make the sample as a single piece and mount them in a holder for ready reference. I must train myself to do that in the future.

[Paul Jones]

Marv,

I was taken by surprise during my simple addition of making the M2.5-0.45 and M3-0.5 thread gages when I discovered the die diameters for cutting the treads were 20 mm and not 13/16" in diameters. I bought the dies years ago and never thought to check the diameters until I started using them. I do not have any die stocks or a lathe die stock for the 20 mm diameter dies.

I made a simple 20 mm ID sleeve with three pass-through screw holding holes for holding the dies in a 1" (25.4 mm) tailstock die holder. I will publish at HMT the very simply but useful selve for accommodating the smaller 20 mm die diameters.

Regards,
Paul Jones

[mklotz]

Interesting. I haven't run into that problem yet. Were your dies bought from Europe? If so, the 20mm size would make sense. Most of mine were bought from USA suppliers so their diameters match those of inferial dies.

At any rate, it sounds like an easy fix.

[Paul Jones]

Marv,

The metric dies were purchased years ago from Enco (now part of MSC) and are made in Japan. I have many precision tools, cutting tools and bearings made in Japan. The quality has always been very good.

The typical 13/16" dies are 0.8125" in diameter and the 20 mm dies are 0.7874" in diameter. Very easy to not notice the difference in diameters unless I laid one die on top of the other and looked closely to see the difference. Now that I know the difference I have found through the Internet several designs of the 20 mm diameter die stock holders for dies typically in the M2.5 to M6 ranges. Now I know the difference.

Thanks Marv,

Paul

[NeiljohnUK]

Standards in the USA? You've got to be kidding. Usonians seem to think that any form of standardization, no matter how reasonable, is an attack on their freedom. Hence their irrational resistance to the metric system...

I had enough of that whilst working for I'm Bloody Marvellous, Idiot Bleeding Management, with some servo-writers originally designed in Rochester ending up with partial metric conversions as you couldn't get US bolts easily in Europe, wrote a piece about the issue back in the late 80's for a US trade association mag, boy that ruffled some feathers...

[Crusty]

Idiot Business Molesters and Indian Broken Machines also work (from another Big Blue refugee).

[mklotz]

I had enough of that whilst working for I'm Bloody Marvellous, Idiot Bleeding Management, with some servo-writers originally designed in Rochester ending up with partial metric conversions as you couldn't get US bolts easily in Europe, wrote a piece about the issue back in the late 80's for a US trade association mag, boy that ruffled some feathers...

Even Usonian mnemonic devices are screwed up.

A popular one is "A pint's a pound the world around." Not only does this jingle ignore the density of the liquid, but a pint of water weighs 1.04318 pounds and that's only true in the USA where the size of a pint is less than in the UK. Who the hell uses volume units to measure weight ? More infuriating is the fluid ounce (floz); it appears to be a weight measure but is actually a volume measure.

Then there's the problem of a single name for a multiplicity of different measures...

There are seven different barrel sizes used in the USA, with the size being dependent on the contents. Their names and metric equivalents are as follows: US cranberry (95.5 liters), US dry (115.628 liters), US liquid (119.24 liters), US federal (117.348 liters), US federal proof spirits (151.416 liters), US drum (208.4 liters), US petroleum (135 kg.), US petroleum statistical (158.99 liters).

[Paul Jones]

Marv, I worked 25 years for a major oil company in oil and gas exploration. We used both metric and imperial measurements on each single project. It was insane. I had to triple check all my calculations to make sure we were drilling exactly to total depth. The wells cost $10 million+ each and the worst case was going too shallow or too deep because of a metric/imperial conversion error.