[AT] Supposedly why our old tractors are not metric and a fairly simple tutorial

[John Hall]

Thanks for the heads up on the conduit, but I hope not to need any of 
it. That was for a robotics customer that we finally told to go take a hike.

One thing I did run across last year was a Metric V-belt, not just 
talking length. Every thing about it was weird, took a lot of searching 
to figure out what it was--and then the fun part was explaining it to 
the guy at Motion Industries.

John



On 2/24/2020 10:05 PM, bradloomis at charter.net wrote:
> John hit my area of experience. Having spent the last 18 years in winery work, 90% of the equipment is either French, German, or Italian. I've had Metric tools since the 71 Norton so I wasn't without experience. All the equipment was, save for as John pointed out metric save for pipe. A French or German piece of equipment well be all metric save for the piping. Good ol IPS works 99% of the time. 1/2" or 3/4" pipe. Even 1/4 and 3/8. Those were on the centrifuges, solenoids. Exception was the freakin Italian DE filter that had god know what straight thread, no taper, wrapped with oakum or some such as a sealant. A real pita to seal. We ultimately cut them off and welded I=Line fittings which allowed any 3" valve in the winery to be used in place of the zillion dollar ball valves that the DE would erode.
> And John, if you need metric conduit fittings, McMaster-Carr has them! At least cord grips which is how most Euros connect their motors, rubber or flexible cord.
> Brad
>
> -----Original Message-----
> On Behalf Of John Hall
>
> Fun fact. Did you know metric pipe threads are actually in inches? They are actually 55 deg threadform (British Whitworth) but the pitch is in metric. And the real fun part is that the rest of the planet can't even decide how to spec them on drawing/print/blueprint. Different countries have different designations for the same thing. Off the top of my head, I think there are a combined 7 different ways of designating metric pipe threads (taper and straight), as opposed to just 2. Now we won't split hairs with short projection, dryseal or other specialty threads--lets stick to 99.999% of pipe threads.
>
> FWIW, I have 30 years in a machine shop and have continually used both english and metric without an issue. Its the rest of the planet that makes a big ordeal out of it, we just grab a print and go with it.
> English, German, Japanese--its all the same--until we have to use Translate Google to figure out the notes.
>
> One more fun fact. Next time you need some roller bearings for your old tractor and start measuring them only to find they aren't exactly english, convert them to metric--you might ought to sit down first.
>
> I won't even get into European conduit threads--I've only had to do them twice.
>
> John Hall
>
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