Recommend me some Verniers

[Aerate]

I have a set of eBay special verniers. They don’t auto shutdown (or at least the battery is always dead when I need them. The printed scale is about a mil off so useless. Most of the ones I have found seem to be exact copies of the ones I have with a Sealey or Clarke badge on them to add £20 to the price. I don’t really fancy a £1.5k Japanese set, but I reckon £50 should get me something reliable and accurate enough for 3D printing and woodworking. Suggestions?

These are the present ones…

[ARH]

Just take the battery out when they are not in use, there will always be a very small current draw due to the way they switch on, the current will be tiny but so are the batteries. The only way to keep a battery alive if only using it for a couple of hours a month is to remove it. This will be the same with any caliper even the most expensive one.

[Super Sonic]

Mitutoyo
Mitutoyo 0-150mm Vernier Caliper 530-101 Machine-DRO https://share.google/3s3QaOsDpmBrlWxjg

[footnote]Edited by Super Sonic on Tuesday 9th December
14:15[/footnote]

Alternatively, if you don't want a vernier caliper, Mitutoyo also make dial calipers from £100.
Mitutoyo 505-742 Dial Caliper, Range 0-6", Graduation 0.001" – H Roberts & Sons https://share.google/Ih88eVwHecoCoR4qH

Edited by Super Sonic on Tuesday 9th December 14:21

[Lotobear]

I bought a Mitutoyo set a few years ago new for around £45 - analogue but great quality and as accurate as you could want.

[Tickle]

They are digital calipers, Mitutoyo are decent though.

[moustachebandit]

Axminster do some manual nice vernier calipers. These are on my Christmas list.

https://www.axminstertools.com/axminster-high-prec...

[Glosphil]

Aerate said:

I have a set of eBay special verniers. They don t auto shutdown (or at least the battery is always dead when I need them. The printed scale is about a mil off so useless. Most of the ones I have found seem to be exact copies of the ones I have with a Sealey or Clarke badge on them to add £20 to the price. I don t really fancy a £1.5k Japanese set, but I reckon £50 should get me something reliable and accurate enough for 3D printing and woodworking. Suggestions?

These are the present ones

I have the same calipers. I only use them very occasionally & always remove the battery after use. Your comment that the scale is 1mm out concerns me.

[Parsnip]

[Welder] Is that not a chipping hammer? [/Welder]

[WrekinCrew]

ARH said:

Just take the battery out when they are not in use, there will always be a very small current draw due to the way they switch on, the current will be tiny but so are the batteries. The only way to keep a battery alive if only using it for a couple of hours a month is to remove it. This will be the same with any caliper even the most expensive one.

I did that with a cheap one and eventually the battery contact broke off. So I splashed out on a Mitutoyo - the battery in that is still going strong after a good two years and it has a real quality feel. But I believe the cheap ones are just as accurate.

[JimM169]

I'm going to get a pair of these next time I'm in Screwfix as fed up with dead batteries as well

https://www.screwfix.com/p/magnusson-vernier-calli...

Should be accurate enough for what I need

[richhead]

Ive never found the electronic calipers much use, as you have found the battery is always flat, i still have a 40 year old analog pair that has out lived many newer fancy ones. something like this.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mitutoyo-530-104-Vernier-...

remember a vernier caliper is only a guide, for proper measurements you need a micrometer.

[xstian]

The ones you can get in Lidl are pretty good and auto switch off so the battery doesn’t run flat. I have 3 pairs, they are cheap, reasonably accurate and I don’t have to worry if I drop them. I have a pair of Mitutoyo which are over 10x the price and I hardly ever use, because the cheap ones are fine and if I want anything more accurate I would use a micrometer anyway.

Watch out for Mitutoyo fakes, only buy from a reputable dealer, not eBay.

[Sporky]

https://www.machine-dro.co.uk/collections/calipers...

No batteries to worry about.

[Tickle]

Sporky said:

https://www.machine-dro.co.uk/collections/calipers...

No batteries to worry about.

Can't go wrong with these, my eyes are the weakest part reading the Vernier scale though nowadays.

[Aerate]

Glosphil said:

I have the same calipers. I only use them very occasionally & always remove the battery after use. Your comment that the scale is 1mm out concerns me.

You can kind of see here. The scale reads '0', but the jaws are an appreciable distance apart. Fine if you have batteries and can zero them, but rubbish if you're relying on the printed scale.

I like the look of the Mitutoyo's suggested by a couple of people, but as noted, 50-year-old eyes are probably not up to reading the scale. The analogue ones with the dial may be the way forward, but it would be nice if there were some digital ones for £50 which had a better battery and accuracy to within 0.1 of a millimetre.

[Arnold Cunningham]

Can’t think why you’d use the printed scale when there’s a nice accurate digital one right there?

[Super Sonic]

Arnold Cunningham said:

Can t think why you d use the printed scale when there s a nice accurate digital one right there?

Battery issues.

[Arnold Cunningham]

CR2032 or LR44, depending on brand/model! Always have some spare.
Anyway, my current calipers are Facom 1300EA and I find them to be generally good, although I’ve never even looked at the manual scale on them.

[hidetheelephants]

For woodwork and 3D printing I'd suggest a cheapo plastic dial caliper instead; I'm too stingy to fork out for a mitutoyo digital and also got fed up with going to use the cheap digital to find the battery flat so I bought one of these. As a bonus plastic is much less likely to mark your woodwork or printing output than sharp edged stainless steel. With use they do wear out but are so cheap it's no bother to have more than one in the workshop.

[clockworks]

Another vote for the Lidl version. My first one worked for 5 or 6 years of pretty much daily use. Failed because the thumb wheel mount broke.
Second one has been working for 3 or 4 years now.

Perfectly fine for pretty much everything, for super accuracy I use a proper micrometer.

Batteries last for several years.