Metric: Godsend or Evil?

[TOOLDEV]

The Inch system comes in handy whenever

I mess up with My size.

I am known to work in mm, so when I explain

that something is only 4/1000 under, it sounds a lot better than 0.1

[Andy]

If we were to switch to Metric here in the US just think, we would have to give up our beloved fractions 64ths 32nds 16ths. For that matter # Number Drills and Letter Drills and #screws and taps and fractional screws and taps. I think it it is much more fun and challenging to have 10,000 different charts to look up these things and try not to error.

Metric would be much too simple and boring!

[Chips Ahoy]

What would I do with thousands of dollars of tools I have built-up over the past years? Scribe new numbers on the thimbles? A calculator is a lot cheaper than buying all new tools.

[Guest CNC Apps Guy 1]

If you have a Japanese machine tool. Swithing to Metric will give you better accuracy (won't help repeatability though) and will give you better processing. This is because all the ballscrews and drive system mechanical stuff (nice terminology huh )is machined and ground in metric.

I personally would love to use Metric all the time. Perhaps the US could've saved about $80 Million on that Mars Crasher, er.... Lander that Lockheed Martin screwed up because of using multiple units on the system. My only problem with Metric is that 32,000 MM/Min sure seems awful fast to me on my machining center(that's about 1259 IPM for you Imperial folks).

They are teaching metric units in Elementary/Jr. High School K-8, but High School reverts back to Imperial measurements.

When I was a machinist, i use to machine the part in whatever the native units were. Oooooohhhh, it used to **** off the bosses. I didn't do it to be a butthead, but why not stay true to the native unit structure right?

That's my two cents.