Inch Fractions to mm to Thousands

[Loren Beach]

It's probably just me, but I find that conversion tables and web sites that convert mm to decimal inches are darned irritating. I learned this stuff in fractions and still relate best to !/8, 3/16, 1/4, etc.

Here is a nice URL page that does what I need, from a yacht design firm, no less...


http://dixdesign.com/inchmil.htm

Now a printout resides beside my monitor for reference.

Anyone under age 30 probably has no idea why this crib sheet is even needed!


Cheers,
Loren

 

[Tom Metzger]

Anyone under age 30 probably has no idea why this crib sheet is even needed!

And those of us over 50 don't know why they need a disclaimer.

 

[Sean Engle]

See? That's why I like hanging around you guys - you make me feel so young!

//sse

 

[footrope]

Good find Loren

The Web sort of puts a new spin on the old saw:

You don't have to memorize (learn) that, you just have to know where to look it up.

I could probably quit carrying that CRC Math Tables Handbook from house to house. Google on.

 

[Jim Mobley]

Easy enough in Excel

This is trivial to do in MS Excel. :nerd:

In my example I'll use cells A1 and B1, but they could be any cells. Format cell A1 (right-mouse-click: Format Cells) to the Category: Fraction and set the Type: Up to two digits. Format cell B1 as a number and set the decimal places to whatever precision you are interested in.

Then enter the following formula in cell B1: =A1*25.4. Any fractional inch value entered in A1 will be displayed in millimeters in B1. For values greater than one inch, put a space between the whole number and the fraction, i.e. 1 1/8 in A1 returns 38.1 in B1.

Now if you want all the mm values for your drill bits from 1/16 through 1 in, just enter the following formula in cell A2: =A1+1/64. Then drag select cells A1 through A61 and while they are selected hold down the Ctrl key and press D. Do the same for cells B1 through B61 and you've got your table. Slick, huh?

 

[MarkA]

Very Slick

Thank you!

 

[Tom Metzger]

A very young man

Jim - You are a very young man, and someday you will you will learn the way.

You can not teach an Apple grower or a Mackintosh junkie to use MS Excel. They pride themselves on their ability to find cheat sheets.

I'm sure Loren meant no harm by this post.

 

[MarkA]

Ahem

Excel is working fine on my Mac, thank you.

 

[Jim Mobley]

Ahem indeed!

I beg your pardon sir, I am neither young nor unfamiliar with "The One True Way!"

My Mac Plus, SE/30, IIsi and PowerBook Duo 230 can attest to this. (All of which have some version of Excel, BTW.)

Unfortunately, the necessity of running certain unenlightened applications--AutoCAD for instance-- forces me to foray to the Dark Side, but I assure you my heart remains true. And now that Boot Camp offers a true dual boot solution, I can return to the enlightened path for all but a few necessary excursions to the darkness of Windows.

In all seriousness, I was going to put in the Mac keyboard commands along with the Windows ones, but couldn't remember for sure if the right-mouse-click analog for the Mac was the Ctrl key or the Command key, and I don't have a current machine to try it on.

The formulae themselves should work with any spreadsheet; I don't know specifically, though, how Apple Works handles fractions and iWork doesn't seem to have a spreadsheet yet. Excel seems to be the dominate spreadsheet on both platforms.

 

[MarkA]

How sad.

It's the ctrl key.

It misses you.

 

[Tom Metzger]

I love it...

I love it when their eyes glow bright RED.

Maybe next week before I take off sailing for a couple of weeks I'll start a thread on tillers vs wheels.

 

[Loren Beach]

Inches and OS's

I love it when their eyes glow bright RED.
Maybe next week before I take off sailing for a couple of weeks I'll start a thread on tillers vs wheels.

Um, Tom, you left out the line about how we all "will be assimilated"...


And here I thought you used your chosen computing OS only because you really enjoyed it so much! You do like it, don't you....?


BTW, is your OS of choice relevant to the thread subject? I really thought I was sharing a tiny little bit of measurement trivia that others might find somewhat helpful, in a self-depreciating and low-key way...

Loren

 

[Tom Metzger]

BTW, is your OS of choice relevant to the thread subject?

No, just having fun in The Raftup, "an off-topic forum; for general chatter, great thoughts, mindless rambling, and frank exchanges of views on less-than-cosmic topics". It really had nothing to do with anyone's choice of operating systems, just their exuberance.

My use of "the way" contained no capitals, and none were intended. It never occurred to me that people were so sensitive. Actually, it was my dear old Pappy that told me "If you are going to throw stones, you may as well take aim".

 

[Loren Beach]

More conversions

http://bosunsupplies.com/EquivalencyTable.cfm

And yet another URL with conversions from inch fractions to decimals to mm to screw size.

Loren

 

[Nicki]

Tom,
I love the taking aim point. right up my street, philosophically speaking.
Nicki

 

[Loren Beach]

Inches to Thousands, oh my

And, for those times when you pick up the guage or tape and find that it tells you decimal thousands and what you really want is inches-and-fractions...

I found this on an engineering data URL, and keep a printout near the work bench.

Loren

ps: no computer operating systems were harmed in creating this... :nerd:

 

[Tom Metzger]

Don't sell yourself short.

Loren - Not thousandths ... Hundred thousandths. Five decimal places. Very good!

Now if we could just address metric fractions to English fractions...

 

[Loren Beach]

At least we're not using Whitworth !

http://www.enginehistory.org/british_fasteners.htm

Interesting history of thread types, in general.

LB

 

[sleather]

Having a career in Arch/Eng "most" of the decimal equivalents are stored in the "Master computer", including the decimals of a foot(although backups are readily at hand). Fractions for architecture, and decimals for engineering, made for some interesting field work and office translations, for arch. projects. The bosses son, an aspiring architect, measured up a prospective office space w/ an engineering tape(4.92') and tried to draw it up w/ an architectural scale(4'-9 1/4"). It never dawned on him that there is no 10 or 11 on an engineering tape. Same thing happened later on w/ a high tech laser distance finder where you have to pre-program .0000' or '-".

In school, I started out in Mechanical Design and after hand drawing toooooo many gears and bolt threads I switched to Architectural Design. That year of MD has paid off handsomely though. AutoCad has sure made MD a lot easier.

 

[Loren Beach]

Drill Bit Sizing

For some reason this particular thread gets a lot of views, even though it has been a while since anything new was added.
But today, while reviewing a thread over on the Plastic Classic Forum that got into finding the proper metric drill bit...
I found a link to yet another chart. It's interesting, if you find this sort of machining trivia interesting...

http://bobmay.astronomy.net/misc/drillchart.htm

It would be best, in this world of eventually broken links, to just copy over the whole chart, but I am not sure just how to do that off hand, and post a PDF here.

LB