LS Starrett Tools???

[drew1]

This company is known for quality tools, especially their measuring instruments.

Their 98 levels, 96 indicators, squares and protractors, dial calipers, vernier height gages,and micrometers are known for their excellence in the millwright and machinist crafts. Some construction jobs have allowed nothing but Starrett All of these are known to be good tools.

Where is Starrett headed now?

I'm a maintenance mechanic & most of the time, I work in our plants machine shop.
A few years ago, the boy I work with bought a set of Starrett dial calipers, new, for about $40 off ebay. That was a deal, they ran for around $110 to $120 in catalogs. Later, I happened to see " Starrett, made in China to Starrett specs in a sale flyer. This boy likes to brag about his stuff & how much better it is than anybody else's. His parts were working and fitting good, so I didn't bust his bubble.

Well he got to double checking his work with some old digital calipers, because things measured good but wouldn't fit. So, I told him about "Made in China". Last week he got a chip or something in the teeth of the rack or gear. The disassembling air & tooth brush didn't work. The calipers have to be rezeroed constantly.

Now the catalog price for this Starrett model is $120, the USA ones $200. I lost my old 6" scale, threw it out with chips, left it somewhere while measuring something in the plant, or just had it fall out of my pocket. The new replacement, that I bought for $25 didn't seem like my old one. I asked my buddy to look at his side by side. My new one did not have Athol, Mass USA. It is probably Chinese junk.

I'm through with Starrett.

[ODDJOB UNO]

1st and foremost YA GET WHAT CHA PAY FOR!


buy cheaP AZZ HARBOR FREIGHT TOOLS.................PEN IN A DATE IT WILL FAIL BY! howz bouts tommorrow?

you purchased a STARRETT model 120Z if i am correct. 0-6" dial caliper.

i really dont give a crap what yer buddy bought, if he bought cheap he gets cheap.

if it says HECHO IN CHEENA(china) then you/he DID IT TO YERSELF!

now let me guess you bought a 6" ruler 10ths /hundredths/32nds/64ths ruler.

if it doesnt say MADE IN USA..................well guess what plan on all yer measurements being screwed.

ANY MACHINE SHOP WORTH A DAMN WOULD NOT EVEN ALLOW YOU IN THE DOOR WITH CHEAP NON CALIBRATED TOOLS!

oh by the way did ya take yer INSTRUCTIONS AND READ THEM?

starrett nor anybody can gurrantee calibration once a precision tool leaves factory.

THATS WHY THEY HAVE A TOOL CRIB WITH PRECISION GAGE BLOCKS AND HIGH BUCK DEAD NUTZ TRU STARRETT PINK GRANITE SURFACE PLATES!


and that where ya get yer TOOLING CALIBRATED DEAD NUTZ!


anything less and yer stroking yerself and the company ya work for cant spell Q.C. (quality control) let alone the word TOLERANCE!


oh by the wayy i literally sold millions of dollars of STARRETT TOOLING over my life.


so either take to tool crib and have CALIBRATED or send it back to ATHOL MASS! and they will repair it. once ya receive it...................ya go to CALIBRATION AND USE PRECISION GAGE BLOCKS TO CALIBRATE!


drop the tool/hammer the tool/crush the tool/bang the tool..................YOU MUST HAVE RE CALIBRATED PERIOD!

if yer parts are WRONG YER FIRED! end of lesson.

BUY MADE IN USA TOOLING AND SAVE YOUR JOB!

p.s. a certain aerospace company i know very well has a 1 BILLION DOLLAR BACKLOG OF "HOT AOG"(plane aint moving until correct part installed) and "AOG"(aircraft on ground) due to shipping raw parts to be machined offshore!

or think like this...........how would ya like to be in the space shuttle KNOWING all the parts purchased were done on LOW BID!

if there is ANYTHING THAT WILL DRIVE A COMPANY(ANY) UNDER FASTER....................ITS POOR QUALITY CONTROL!

[sammyg2]

I've got lots of starrett equipment, along with my favorite brown and sharp stuff.
But it's almost all at least 30 years old.

The only starrett stuff I've bought recently is the 96 indicator kits, usually but a couple a year of them for the shop. Haven't notice any change in quality yet.

I like the starrett 6" scales but usually can't justify the cost so I order these instead for $6 a pop.
They grow legs so I get 5 at a time.
McMaster-Carr

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by ODDJOB UNO

1st and foremost YA GET WHAT CHA PAY FOR!


buy cheaP AZZ HARBOR FREIGHT TOOLS.................PEN IN A DATE IT WILL FAIL BY! howz bouts tommorrow?

you purchased a STARRETT model 120Z if i am correct. 0-6" dial caliper.

i really dont give a crap what yer buddy bought, if he bought cheap he gets cheap.

if it says HECHO IN CHEENA(china) then you/he DID IT TO YERSELF!

now let me guess you bought a 6" ruler 10ths /hundredths/32nds/64ths ruler.

if it doesnt say MADE IN USA..................well guess what plan on all yer measurements being screwed.

ANY MACHINE SHOP WORTH A DAMN WOULD NOT EVEN ALLOW YOU IN THE DOOR WITH CHEAP NON CALIBRATED TOOLS!

oh by the way did ya take yer INSTRUCTIONS AND READ THEM?

starrett nor anybody can gurrantee calibration once a precision tool leaves factory.

THATS WHY THEY HAVE A TOOL CRIB WITH PRECISION GAGE BLOCKS AND HIGH BUCK DEAD NUTZ TRU STARRETT PINK GRANITE SURFACE PLATES!


and that where ya get yer TOOLING CALIBRATED DEAD NUTZ!


anything less and yer stroking yerself and the company ya work for cant spell Q.C. (quality control) let alone the word TOLERANCE!


oh by the wayy i literally sold millions of dollars of STARRETT TOOLING over my life.


so either take to tool crib and have CALIBRATED or send it back to ATHOL MASS! and they will repair it. once ya receive it...................ya go to CALIBRATION AND USE PRECISION GAGE BLOCKS TO CALIBRATE!


drop the tool/hammer the tool/crush the tool/bang the tool..................YOU MUST HAVE RE CALIBRATED PERIOD!

if yer parts are WRONG YER FIRED! end of lesson.

BUY MADE IN USA TOOLING AND SAVE YOUR JOB!

p.s. a certain aerospace company i know very well has a 1 BILLION DOLLAR BACKLOG OF "HOT AOG"(plane aint moving until correct part installed) and "AOG"(aircraft on ground) due to shipping raw parts to be machined offshore!

or think like this...........how would ya like to be in the space shuttle KNOWING all the parts purchased were done on LOW BID!

if there is ANYTHING THAT WILL DRIVE A COMPANY(ANY) UNDER FASTER....................ITS POOR QUALITY CONTROL!

Where's that emoticon .... oh there it is

calibrated? . That's what standards are for. You don't need some outside yahoo to calibrate your tools for you unless yer brain dead or have a stoopid gubmint contract that requres third party. My machinists are required to check all mikes against a standard and if out, make the adjustment. It aint rocket surgery.

BTW, most made in Japan mikes are as good or better than anything made in the US.


my shop:

[targa911S]

My father was a machinist all his life. All of his precision measuring tools were Starrett. When he died I got all his machine tools. I cherish them to this day.

[ODDJOB UNO]

im not gonna argue usa vs jap precision tooling. i will argue chinese/korean/taiwan vs usa mfg'd.

99.8 % of all our tooling and precision tooling sold was MILITARY or NASA or DARPA contracts.


and the vast majority were STARRETT MADE IN ATHOL MASS USA precision tools. MANDATED BY CONTRACTS!

start putting alot of ZEROS after the decimal point like 78millionths. and it kind of gets INTENSE!

going into space? OH BOY yer tolerances better be dead nutz perfect. thread the shuttles exploding fuel cell bolts..............and tell me all about tolerances. if a Q-TIPS single strand of fiber grabbed a burr on a single thread under a magnifying glass, the entire lot was rejected until reworked and then NASA rechecked them. and yes they were starrett thread pitch gages used.

i still have some buddies at garrett/honeywell and by the time they get the part to machine................its already got $250K worth of machine work done to it already! before they even TOUCH IT!

if i remember the calibration room TEMP was set at a constant 72 degrees F with a certain number relative humidity CONSTANT! basically like an intel clean room for checking tolerances. mega filters on a/c units etc. everything lasered off. starrett surface plates cleaned every shift. and i mean BIG AZZD SURFACE PLATES THAT WOULD CRUSH A CAR IF DROPPED!

i made 16 ZILLION TRW airbag triggers out of 304 low leaded stainless. 37 QC checks on each one before sodium azide(EXTREMELY EXPLOSIVE) was installed and then shipped to auto mfg's. NOT a GUBBERMINT CONTRACT and ALL PRECISION TOOLING WAS MANDATED STARRETT USA! if that damn airbag trigger dont go off in a pico second, everybody from TRW all the way down to manufacture of that airbag trigger was SUED INTO THE STONE AGE!

it all depends on what yer making, if its aerospace, they kind of have it down to a science here in the usa. offshore.....................well its SCAREY!

[johnsjmc]

It,s happening in most industries isn,t it? A consequence of Globelization is it? Or the PT Barnum marketing stategy of our consumer society? If it looks the same and is cheaper it,s good enough for most. You know " fool most of the people all the time "?

I have a niece who is a chef. She wanted a Henkels brand knife set for a wedding gift.
Turns out there are Henkels made in Germany and Henkels made in China. They look exactly the same except the logo is slightly different.
You get what you pay for.
When I bought a set of Sears Craftsman combination wrenches a few years ago.( As I was retired and no longer buying just SnapOn) they Look good sold at Sears Should be made in USA but this set was made in Japan if you look at them closely. They appear equal to any other Craftsman wrench . Japan and Germany do make good stuff.
Mitutoyu has similar to (US) Starret quality doesn,t it?
Is a VW made in Germany better than the same model made in Mexico?
Is the Toyota made in the USA as good as the one made in Japan?
At least with the same parent company you expect similar quality and warranty.

If tool buyers are only interested in price you can go to Harbour Freight.
I,ve said a few times lately, when discussing handtools ,that
I understand they are going sell a line to compete directly with SnapOn. Called SnapOff.
Similar name and warranty BUT NOT quite same parent company, or quality..
You get what you pay for.

[Hugh R]

I remember when I rebuilt my DB4, I told the machinist I wanted between 1 thou and 1.25 thou clearance on the main bearings. He said "Well, which one do you want?" Again, temp and humidity controlled machine shop.

[Flieger]

Originally Posted by Hugh R

I remember when I rebuilt my DB4, I told the machinist I wanted between 1 thou and 1.25 thou clearance on the main bearings. He said "Well, which one do you want?" Again, temp and humidity controlled machine shop.

Wow!

Guess I better stick with Vernier calipers then. I have a pair of Starrett digital calipers at work. First Starrett tool I have used. Seems nice compared to everything else I have used. Didn't look to see where it was made.

I am just an enginerd, though. Not a machinist, so it isn't a big deal if it is a thou off since it is for reference only.

[futuresoptions]

I have a good friend that I served with in the military that builds ball bearings for a major manufacturer. You would not believe how anal the details are in building these things... I couldn't see myself in the position of manufacturing balls to such a level of perfection... When I go to buy myself a wheel bearing for one of my vehicles, I am glad that there are people dedicated to building parts that I would consider mundane...

[billybek]

I haven't noticed a decline in Starrett quality in the overhaul shop.
I will check the new stock tools and see where they are manufactured.

[mjohnson]

Originally Posted by sammyg2

... calibrated? . That's what standards are for. You don't need some outside yahoo to calibrate your tools for you unless yer brain dead or have a stoopid gubmint contract that requres third party. My machinists are required to check all mikes against a standard and if out, make the adjustment. It aint rocket surgery...

Our "Quality Industrial Complex" pulls that crap with our mics and balances. Requires each and every one to be pulled out of service for a month or so for "calibration" so that it can get a DOE Type 1 cal cert. Such shenanigans aren't required by anyone but the internal cal lab monkeys.

The funny thing is that what we call a Type 3 cal is what the real world does - check before and after use against a calibrated standard. This is somehow seen as inadequate by our cal lab monkeys. I see it as being far superior to a full calibration! The user knows immediately, before the workpiece leaves his station, that the measuring tool was good or bad. The risk of a physical standard (jo blocks/std weights) changing during a calibration interval is FAR less than that of a complex measuring tool (calipers/balance) changing in that same interval. If you rely on every tool being Type 1 certified you put everything you've accepted at risk until that tool closes calibration in 6 mo or a year. The parts you've accepted since then might be long gone - and you have to call them back and go through tons of paperwork agony.

Oy the hangovers I used to have when I lived this life as a product engineer...

Well that was a rant -- get some gage blocks kids!

And I'm thankful that for home use I have my grandfather's measurement stuff - he was an aerospace tooling machinist in the '50s and '60s. No chinese stuff there!

[J P Stein]

If you're not using gauge blocks you have no one but yourself to blame.
Any make of tool can get knocked out of whack. Thirty years of QC (the last 20 or so inspecting machined parts) experience will teach you some stuff. I did learn to trust our cal cert lab. My 1 inch Mitutoyu mic measures down to half a tenth.....till the battery goes dead. How often do you need to measure a half tenth? .000005

BTW, it's 25 deg outside, the East wind is blowing down the gorge and it's snowing....I'm staying inside .

[mgatepi]

If you are a TS16949 certified company, which is an automotive certification that ALL OEM's require, you must have a 3rd party calibration of all your measurement tools!!!

Correction; ALL your measurement tools must be traceable to your 3rd part calibrated equipment.

[ODDJOB UNO]

i use to call on DOE at los alamos/kirtland(sandia labs) and project mercury. had my secret squirrel clearance. we machined radiated parts/we did nuklar bomb triggers/ICBM miss-kill nose cones/patriot fuel cells/f-117 wing flap actuators/down in carlsbad at the WHIP site(waste isolation) we did nuklar containers for storage blah blah. any/all military base no matter army navy airforce /marines.

if it was built conceived thought of whispered about dreamed about and came to fruition on a manual or CNC mill or lathe somewhere our tooling or precision tools were involved.

we didnt build the entire object we built components that were involved in the product. be it a bomb/misskill/tor-pe-do/rifle/pistol/mortar/howitzer/tank(YUMA proving grounds),humvee/ship/boat/airplane/suppressors/spoon frames/barrels/f/glass stocks etc etc etc.

it was WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY KOOL because everyday was something different and a different dragon to slay.

made some el supremo bucks and had fun doing it. the travel would kill a horse but none the less it was literally on the "CUTTING EDGE" of technology.

hell i had to drag my ass to every kind of mill/mine site there was. samo with the railroads machining "trucks" for rail cars and engines in el paso where they refurb engines and rail cars of all types.

then we had the "macqui" plants acorss the border. evinrudes/johnson outboards/holly carbs/ chainsaws/ford parts/chevy parts/edelbrock and on and on and on.

99.9% of the population on this planet doesnt have a clue how a PART /ANY PART comes to fruition. knowing the mfg ordeal backwards and forwards , you gain a keen eye towards whats what and WHATS JUNK! most people "think" items fall from "lil trees".

ISO 9001 and all the ensuent paper trail on EVERY ACTIVITY/PART/MATERIAL/TOOLING/PRECISION TOOLING/TESTING(dee-structive and non dee-structive)/calibration could choke a horse also. and DID quite often.

[ODDJOB UNO]

p.s. one of my honeywell/garrett machinist buddies used to work at TON-O-WONDAH new yerk, doing chevy big blocks from raw. then he got a job at cummins doing their engine blocks. some wayyyyyyy cool stuff there.


biggest MILL in the state of az is at KARSTEN PING GOLF.( lasered pad size of olympic swimming pool. mill trucked in and railed in) there we did the patriot fuel cells out of alum at 10,000 RPMS with helical end mills..

TOP THAT RPM! sounded like a freeking machine gun running. we could not build enuff of them during the gulf war.

one of the MOST profitable parts we ever did was 15-5 surgical steel bone reamers for hip transplants. cost to mfg was like $35 bucks, sold to wholesaler for $75 bucks, then sold to hospital for $250 bucks and then sold to YOU for $500 bucks when ya have yer hip replaced. doc chucks it in black and decker 3/8th drill, reams out bone cavity and then throws it on the floor contaminated never to be used again and dumped in a hazmat land fill.

i dont miss the money/i dont miss the travel/and i sure as hell DONT MISS THE PAPERWERK..................what i do miss is every single day it was making something that DID MATTER how are tolerances were kept. and there is PRIDE in making something from a raw material.


every time any OF YOU walk up to an jet turbine engine(military or commercial) while boarding a plane and see the HOT ROTATING ENGINE BLADES out of iconel 718(machined with whiskas inserts) think of me. we did so many turbine blades my eyes STILL BUG OUT thinking about them. iconel is some nasty azz stuff to mill or lathe(high nickel content samo as a meteorite). but the best part was watching frozen chickens and turkeys launched into turbine engines at speed to simulate a BIRDSTRIKE in the test cells. WHAT A HOOT! somedays they maintained power...............................and somedays ........................well lets say this..................somebodies AZZ WAS ON THE LINE when they FLAMED OUT!

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by ODDJOB UNO

im not gonna argue usa vs jap precision tooling. i will argue chinese/korean/taiwan vs usa mfg'd.

99.8 % of all our tooling and precision tooling sold was MILITARY or NASA or DARPA contracts.


and the vast majority were STARRETT MADE IN ATHOL MASS USA precision tools. MANDATED BY CONTRACTS!

start putting alot of ZEROS after the decimal point like 78millionths. and it kind of gets INTENSE!

going into space? OH BOY yer tolerances better be dead nutz perfect. thread the shuttles exploding fuel cell bolts..............and tell me all about tolerances. if a Q-TIPS single strand of fiber grabbed a burr on a single thread under a magnifying glass, the entire lot was rejected until reworked and then NASA rechecked them. and yes they were starrett thread pitch gages used.

i still have some buddies at garrett/honeywell and by the time they get the part to machine................its already got $250K worth of machine work done to it already! before they even TOUCH IT!

if i remember the calibration room TEMP was set at a constant 72 degrees F with a certain number relative humidity CONSTANT! basically like an intel clean room for checking tolerances. mega filters on a/c units etc. everything lasered off. starrett surface plates cleaned every shift. and i mean BIG AZZD SURFACE PLATES THAT WOULD CRUSH A CAR IF DROPPED!

i made 16 ZILLION TRW airbag triggers out of 304 low leaded stainless. 37 QC checks on each one before sodium azide(EXTREMELY EXPLOSIVE) was installed and then shipped to auto mfg's. NOT a GUBBERMINT CONTRACT and ALL PRECISION TOOLING WAS MANDATED STARRETT USA! if that damn airbag trigger dont go off in a pico second, everybody from TRW all the way down to manufacture of that airbag trigger was SUED INTO THE STONE AGE!

it all depends on what yer making, if its aerospace, they kind of have it down to a science here in the usa. offshore.....................well its SCAREY!

Dude, I've worked in or ran precision machine shops for most of my adult life.

Millionths? You use starrett tools to measure to the millionths? You must be good.
My starrett mikes are only accurate to 5/100,000ths (half of the smallest graduation).
I have to use a precision ground quartz flat ( flat to 30 NANOMETERS PER CM)and a monocromatic helium light to measure to the millionths, (6 millionths is the width of a helium light band).
But that's OK, I gots two of them set-ups to measure the flatness of mechanical seal faces.

And starrett thread gauges are not capable of performing the task you described to the level of accuracy you described, but it sounded good.

I've got two granite inspection tables in my shop. The small one weights about a half ton. The big one needs special footings in the concrete under it to keep from crushing the 6" thick floor.
And this shop is 1/3 the size of the last shop I ran.
Here's an interesting tid-bit. We recently bought the BP refinery across the street and are in the process combining the two.
Their new maintenance building/machine shop cost $50 million to build 2 years ago.
And except for their larger overhead cranes and bigger VTL's (and more staffing) they don't have any capability my smaller shop doesn't have.
No big deal to overhaul/repair/modify/upgrade a $ multi-million machine in either shop. That's what we do.

And if ya wanna get into the shuttle's exploding fuel cell (and stage separation) bolts we can do that, if fact I can include the guy who came up with the design for most of em.
Did you know that back when they first started using exploding bolts on rockets (the bolts don't actually explode, duh, the shape charges are around them) they had shape charges 360 degrees around the bolts and broke the bolts through pure over-tensioning them. dumb de dumd dumb.

Dad said, that's dumb. Give me two hollowed out washers, I'll load the 'splosives in one side and index the charges 180 out and it'll shear the bolts just like using scissors. It was more reliable, accurate, and took 1/10th as much boom boom sauce.

[wdfifteen]

You mean my new Chinese combination micrometer/welding clamp may be lacking in accuracy? I don't think so.

[johnsjmc]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

You mean my new Chinese combination micrometer/welding clamp may be lacking in accuracy? I don't think so.

And my new set of "Snap Off" tools look great . They have a lifetime warranty too don,t you know?

[island911]

thanks for the post, Sam.

fwiw, I have one pair of "American Made" Starrett digital calipers - they sit in a drawer because they eat batteries, compared to new Mitutoyos.

Mitutoyo - the tool of choice. Then I also have vernier and some dual-dial (in/mm) calipers for locations where they may otherwise walk away. --no one walks-off with calipers that have to be read beyond an LCD.