I come from working on cars, and pretty much everything on a car is metric. 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, 17mm, etc are the most common sizes, and I've developed an eye for them. I can spot a 12mm fastener from a mile away. The system is easy to understand and makes sense, since you go in 1mm increments, and it's easy to eyeball what a mm looks like.
However, I got a new job and a lot of the stuff we use here is in American units, so it's all fractions of an inch, and I'm having issues developing an eye for the fasteners. 3/8, 11/32, 9/16, 7/16, 1/2 are all pretty archaic ways to communicate fastener and wrench sizes among your co-workers, whereas the metric system just makes more sense.
Why the frick do we still use this archaic bullshit inches system when we could be using the refined metric system?
Finally someone with some sense has made an excellent thread here. Have some Pringles.
Pizza flavour? No thank you anon, ill just have a water
Genius mechanic posts image with objects that have been proven long ago to be worse than nothing. Damn I sure would like some of those Pringles.
yeah, third grade was rough, but stick with it and you'll get a hang of them fractions.
Base ten was a mistake.
Redpill me on Base 6
>"Weird numbers" is an actual thing mathematicians came up with
They don’t even need all the sizes they have, nobody needs all bolt sizes in 1mm increments.
Also, I have things like 2.5 mm sizes in things like allen wrenches.
I didn’t have a 20mm wrench the other day, so I wnt to buy one—unobtainium. HD, lowes, crappy tire, princess auto all sold out.
Metric and SAE
Metric divides by 2 5 10
SAE divides by 2 3 4 6 12
Your sockets are metric, the ratchet is SAE for a reason.
moron
>i am extremely familiar with metric
>it's so easy!
>i am now using something i have little experience with
>it's so hard!
it seems like the people who do have experience with it struggle as well. they'll tell me that a fastener is a certain size and to go get the wrench. I'll go get the wrench and oopsie-whoopsie he guessed wrong. maybe i just work with idiots, though.
I'm better at using the system of measurement I'm more familiar with, and I'm worse at using the system of measurement that I'm less familiar with.
Wow, that's incredible.
>maybe i just work with idiots, though
Considering that they hired you, it's likely that their standard for intelligence when considering potential employees is rather low. So yes, you probably do work with idiots.
Right on the nose. So sick of the snobby “metric is superior, just change everything because i’m a drool brain” argument. The users of SAE started the industrial revolution, founder of modern manufacturing, created the first gauge blocks, the basic building blocks of everything around us - but oh yeah… let’s change all that to make mouth breather “think” learning a system is easier. So fricking braindead. OP should be embarrassed.
British started industrial revolution and they were smart enough to finally realize metric makes more sense. Your smartest and brightest also use metric in the most advanced science research and complicated designs.
Even simple precision manufacturing in US uses base ten divisions (thou).
For the everyman it makes little difference, I'll admit. You aren't doing anything hard. But if you are doing something complicated wasting time on unit conversion is inefficient.
If you read my original comment I said the founders of SAE started the industrial revolution. And no they weren’t using metric in the 1800s they were using SAE. Up until the 1960s in fact. Yes we use base 10 in the manufacturing world but when you are talking 1 one thousand of an inch precision you aren’t going to fraction that so it’s kind of a moot point. Point is OP can’t pass 5th grade mathematics.
>I'm having issues developing an eye for the fasteners. 3/8, 11/32, 9/16, 7/16, 1/2 are all pretty archaic ways to communicate fastener and wrench sizes among your co-workers, whereas the metric system just makes more sense.
Tell me you're a mouth-breather without telling me you're a mouth-breather...
That 11/32 sure gets used a ton doesn't it??? As for fastener sizes, your most common sizes are 1/4, 5/16, 3/8, 1/2, and 5/8 and the wrench sizes for those 5 common fastener sizes are 7/16, 1/2, 9/16, 3/4, and 15/16.
Basically once you get that down you can handle 99% of shit by sight. 7/16 and 9/16 fasteners are so rare it doesn't really matter, and when you get gud you can even tell them apart from the otners by sight...
>7/16 and 9/16 fasteners are so rare it doesn't really matter,
Depends on the machine but they cross (because sockets are broached to suitable tolerances) to 11mm and 14mm making those SAE sizes doubly useful.
8mm = 5/16"
9 and 10mm no interchange
11m = 7/16"
12mm = no interchange
13mm = 1/2"
14mm =9/16
15mm = approx 5/8, not always
There is more overlap with larger sizes, six point preferred of course.
The wrench sizes are common. But 7/16 and 9/16 diameter fasteners are not. A 7/16 diameter fastener usually uses a 5/8 wrench on the head and an 11/16 wrench on the nut. I believe a 9/16 diameter bolt uses a 13/16 wrench on the head and a 7/8 on the nut, but it has been a minute since i have dealt with one...
The core of the metric system should be separated from its decimal prefixes so that people be able to use it with any number base.
>Why the frick do we still use this archaic bullshit inches system when we could be using the refined metric system?
Because the metric system was invented around the time America had already industrialised, so all of their machines were already in imperial, and industry leaders actively lobbied to have the US reject the metric system so they wouldn't have to re-tool.