I was wondering if there is any use for a (for the simplicity of this discussion) a 1/48 scale vernier caliper? I found one ages ago, but that company is out of business. I am assuming with the lack of offerings that this would not be something people in the modelling world would want. ??
Is this something that could be made on a 3D printer? I don’t the know accuracy of that equipment to know.
Nope. I just use a plain ol’ ruler, when I need to. One with English and metric gradations. Personally I don’t need to buy yet another one, when I have a drawer full of rulers.
I’ve got a couple scale rulers, but they are made from fairly thin aluminum. I made the mistake once of dragging a blade along side for a cut or scribe and took a chunk out of the straight edge.
I’ve since picked up a couple regular steel ones from a dollar store, I can cut against them with no issues and if I need measurements I do the math. Same with calipers, I do the math, that way one tool works for all scales.
Well that’s good to know. I actually own three of these. When I was in high school choosing my college major, I came down to three choices - computer science, aeronautical engineering, and architecture. I didn’t feel up to the higher levels of math required in aero, and computer science was in the college of engineering so therefore similar math requirements, so that left me with architecture (with only trig as the higher math that I needed, which was simple enough). Curiously, I HATED architecture, so ended up transferring to the college of business for a business-related computer science degree (which came with a requirement for only finite and first year calculus).
Another helpful way to think about the problem is to understand what an inch means for the scale you’re working with. For example with aircraft, the more common scale numbers seem odd to the metric mind but were chosen because:
A regular ruler can get you:
For 1:8 use the regular inches divided by eighths
For 1:16 use the regular inches divided by sixteenths
An architects’ scale ruler can get you a few scales:
For 1:48 use the 1/4 scale
For 1:24 use the 1/2 scale
For 1:12 use the 1 scale
An engineer’s scale ruler can get you:
For 1:25 use the 50 scale (1 inch equals 50 inches) counting every other graduation as an inch.
An engineers scale also has 10, 20, 30, 100 scales which could sometimes prove useful.
And a pica rule (used in the graphic arts industry) where 1 inch is equal to 12 points, or 6 picas so you could extrapolate:
1 pica would equal 1 foot at 1:72 scale
1 point (1/2 pica) would equal 1 foot at 1:144 scale
The outliers would be, 1:32 (1 inch equals 32 inches) and 1:35 (1 inch equals 35 inches).
Expo Tools has various scale rulers including O, OO, and N gage rules for model railroads as well as 1:72 and 1:35 scale rules for modeling. If you are working in metric, Dspiae has a metric triangle ruler that has various scales in metric.
I wrote this Javascript scale converter back when I was tending the IPMS San Diego web site.
Still accessible and works though doesn’t render as nicely - the new site is much nicer
