Imperial & Metric Headaches

[Dr G]

My Qld drivers licence has height in Centimetres.

Who would have thought qld would be progressive

Dr G

[Mulga]

Who would have thought qld would be progressive

[HiWall]

It's got me stuffed. Started the changeover while I was still in school with the currency, followed by all the rest over time. Managed to get a grip on the currency but the rest is weird - I still convert km & kmph to miles and still work out fuel consumption in MPG - but I do the conversion it in my head, in this case the metric system means nothing to me as I just can't relate it to the situation. Buggered if I can work out how long it will take to travel somewhere unless I convert the distance and estimated speed back to miles.

Worked at sea for most of my life so I a lot more used to working with nautical miles, knots, fathoms etc than either metric or imperial measurements. As for the new power and torque systems - bloody hell, bring back horsepower and foot lbs, coz I have no bloody idea what kilowatts, newton metres and PS is. I put PSI in my tyres, not bloody Kilopascals.

[frakka]

All my schooling was imperial measure and in the first few years of surveying worked in chains and links, feet and inches, feet and tenths of feet and lastly metric. I still have all the conversion factors indelibly imprinted on my mind.

[GregT]

I use both metric and imperial as a machinist. I started my apprenticeship using nothing but imperial, that was in 1988. We had no metric measuring equipment at all and even now, most reference manuals list both metric and imperial to accommodate that. I was really set on imperial as it is a system which is really easy to use given that I normally work in decimal inches anyway rather than fractions.

For almost all other machining though I use metric, it is a little simpler. A good way to see it is to ask which is bigger, say 27/64" or 7/16". It's not as instant to recognise as if you were ask which is bigger, 10.7mm or 11.1mm.

I do use imperial for reloading because it's the standard, no-one seems to speak about seating a bullet .125mm off the lands, it's easier to stick to the norm.

[morerams]

I got used to the metric measurements, but wish they would stick to mm & metres and forget about trying to use damn cm.

[curan]

I use both metric and imperial as a machinist. I started my apprenticeship using nothing but imperial, that was in 1988. We had no metric measuring equipment at all and even now, most reference manuals list both metric and imperial to accommodate that. I was really set on imperial as it is a system which is really easy to use given that I normally work in decimal inches anyway rather than fractions.........

I finished my apprenticeship in 1982, and had a similar experience using the old equipment. And like you, I still prefer to machine in "thous" when I can, although if the lathe has metric dials, I will use metric.

regards, curan

[Ned Kelly]

G'Day All,
no change in the forseeable future!

State of the art aircraft today are still using 0.000 inches, even airbus still use imperial sized nuts and bolts (A330's dunno about the A380's) I seem to recall they are designed in metric dimensions, then converted to imperial for all the worlds airlines, even the manuals list imperial sizes first then in brackets the mm!
FWIW born 1966 and I've used both systems, just use the one that bests suits, woodworking in mm's, metal working in both, aircraft maintenance in imperial.

Cheerio Ned