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On the choice/habit of units. I recently came to a related realization about the units I use - growing up in the UK in the 1970's and 80's means I've always been fluent in metric and imperial, so I'm lucky that I can think and convert with no friction. I compounded this by studying astronomy which has a whole set of wacky units to deal with distances between planets and stars, as well as subatomic units and relativistic units. Oh and a lot of old astronomy books used a different kind of Metric units for good measure. So, when working on a problem I'll work in whatever units get me the answer fastest. And now I'm a pilot I get feet, miles, nautical miles, celsius and pressure in inches of mercury when I listen to the weather, because this was something standardized by many nations in the past.
One of my favorite discoveries when learning SI units in high school physics was that you can choose to express simple ideas with intentionally wacky combinations of units, one of the best being 1 second = 1 ohm * 1 farad. So invariably when my friends and I were asking each about time estimates the ohm-farad would be invoked.
As a Canadian civil engineer I have to always, every single day convert between imperial and metric. The workers are usually in imperial, but the size of things are in both, I need to refer to both USA and European manufacturer and encounter old standards. In particular wood, sawn lumber is named in imperial, but is nominal sized, in actual imperial length but if assembled in engineered wood, it's in metric, also the wood building standard is pure metric. So ya, total mess (excluding the rest of the Canadian unit weirdness, like oven in Farenheit, but outside temp and body temp in celsius, but sauna and pools in farentheit, flour measured in cups but but beef and butter in grams)
I grew up in the US in the 90s, we were introduced to both metric and imperial systems. I can measure in either, but I *think* in imperial units, and when I am constructing or designing things for myself, to the extent that I do, it is naturally in imperial measurements. Cooking done with table spoons, pints, quarts, distance in inches/feet/yards/miles, fractions don't scare me, and weight in ounces & pounds. Do I understand what a gram, celsius, a liter, and a meter are? Sure, I'm familiar with the concepts and can use tools to measure in those units. But to truly wrap my mind around and understand it, I need to convert to more familiar units.
Its interesting how people have different perspectives on measurements. I myself understand the metric system and how easy it is but still prefer imperial. Personally I think using inches for woodworking is a must. An inch is the perfect size for measuring wood and making cuts.
Lots of imperial in the aerospace industry so I became accustomed to it in school. I prefer SI but I just don't see it often enough to make it the choice.
At my old job, I was the only one who used metric. The software we used had metric dialog boxes but has the option to display inches on the status bar. People resized things using the mouse, and were virtually never able to get 1.000 inches. One day, a manager came to ask me why I used metric, because apparently that was causing problems whenever anyone came to assist me. (I wrote measurements on the order forms in centimeters, sometimes millimeters.) The look on her face when I typed 25.4 in the Resize dialog box and got 1.000 inches was priceless. 😂
I’m old (70), and grew up with inches. Working construction in the 70s and 80s, I used imperial. Traveling the rest of the world in the 80s, I learned metric easily and adopted it pretty thoroughly. I shifted careers to textiles in the 90s, and I dye in a combination of metric and grains, but I weave in inches and yards. I guess I pretty much just picked up whatever was handy and learned my crafts in whatever system they were being taught in. I’m fast with math though, and numbers never have confused me.
I grew up with imperial units too and I still think in terms of feet and inches for everyday projects. In an Asian country where they use metric, I thoughtfully converted my design from inches to metric. The man doing the construction converted back to imperial because his catalogs showed materiel dimensions in "inches". I have no doubt that metric is a lot better but after decades of thinking "imperial" I can't readily visualize "how long is a foot in metric?" Oh, 30 cm, I've got it now. However, temperature in degrees Celsius bothers me. Celsius is such a large increment. Deg F is better for air conditioning.
In the UK we use a curious mix of Metric and Imperial and we tend to use Imperial for body weight (stone and lbs). I finally made the switch to metric for my bodyweight when I had to regularly have my bodyweight taken for chemo-radiotherapy. It has stuck and is a pleasant reminder of beating cancer.
That's nice that you have that from something bad. We also have imperial for road distances and speeds. I personally use imperial for a person's height and small guessed local distances but metric if I measure anything accurately. Weights have always been a mess to me, partly because I was taught metric but in the reality of the 70's and 80's, the country still primarily used imperial in shops etc.
yep we brits are an odd bunch. I was speaking to a joiner (Carpenter) on a job site one day as I was curious why he flipped between inches and cm/mm when measuring things. The answer I got was which ever numbers are closes to what ever I am measuring wins. So if he was measuring from left to right it would be inches and if he was measuring from right to left it would be cms I also tend to use KG for weight as Stones and lbs make no sense what so ever and 83kg sounds much lighter than 184lbs I would much rather be 84 metric bags of sugar than 184 imperial bags of sugar :) Any one round here use Miles and Meters instead of Miles and Yards :)
@@warrmr I've never used yards so I guess that would be me. Also, I read your comment quickly at first and thought you said John Carpenter, as in the famous director and was going to ask what you worked on together. 😁
Just to be even weirder I use metric to measure temperature inside and summer outside weather I use Fahrenheit. Then in the winter I use centigrade. 70deg f is a nice heat, 0 deg c is chilly. 21 deg c indoors is a good target temperature. Odd init.
Depends on age. I'm a 33 year old electrician and the only imperial measurement that means anything to me are miles, and thats only because our speed limits and distances on sign posts are still measured in miles. If somebody tells me something is 500 yards up the road I will think of it as being roughly 450 meters. Fahrenheit and lbs mean absolutely nothing to me. If somebody says its 90 degrees outside I immediately think "b***ocks water boils at 100 degrees, it's not that hot".
It's also a generational thing. My parents used imperial measures but we learned metric in school, so I tend to flip between both depending on what I'm measuring.
Exactly my experience. My parents were old enough that they grew up with imperial and imparted that knowledge to me through their own use but in school I learned metric as that was the standard by then. Today I tend to use imperial for estimating unimportant measurements "oh it's about 2 inches" but I measure and work solely in metric where accuracy is required.
@@apsilonblueexactly. I tend to find myself thinking in inches when cooking for example. Though funnily enough when we’re cooking together I’ve found if I tell my dad to chop stuff an inch long it’s 2-2.5 inches long, if I tell him to chop a centimetre long it comes out an inch long 😅
I grew up with metric, but building and repairing guitars means that I've had to learn a great deal of imperial, as that's the industry standard measurement for designs and a lot of the luthiery tools one uses. It's helped by the fact that I inherited my grandfather's workshop and he always worked in imperial, having started his joinery apprenticeship in 1954 before metric was standardised in Australia.
Im Aussie aswell! My father owns an extensive toolshop, even in graphic design I only ever used metric but I can ask my father and size mm socket and he can tell me the imperial or close to equivalent haha I hate empirical its so painful! I do 3d printing now... I COULDNT IMAGINE going through settings in imperial
A lot of the old crafts were imperial because England was imperial. Bookbinding is much the same. Metric is BY FAR the superior choice but knowing both is a must if you do anything that has ties to the old world.
@@tecnogadget2 I'm not a machinist, so micron accuracy is not the goal for me. I think that all information is useful and therefore good. Happy to learn with both systems. The hardware used on guitars is made in a combination of metric and imperial, so if I want things to fit and line up correctly, I will use both systems.
When I started my apprenticeship we used imperial one year later we switched to metric, it didn’t take long to get used to it and it was actually easier and quicker to get accurate measurements.
I found myself finally switching to mm over inches when i wanted to make small PC enclosures, which are usually also compared to each other in Liters volume, and it is incredibly easy to figure out the volume in liters of a box by taking the 3 sides in mm and just multiplying them together, but trying to find cubic inches and converting was much more difficult. Now i just do everything in mm instead of inches.
That's why people who actually need to multiply and think jn multiple dimensions (instead of just measuring them) inevitably convert to metric. It's just a billion times easier
I grew up in the US using imperial but did learn metric a little in school. I also grew up on the Canadian border so that helped with metric. Joining the Army moved me a little more into the metric camp. There is a mix in the Army of both. I then went to Germany with the Army and that moved me even further to the side of metric. I then left the Army and stayed in Germany. I've been in Germany half my life as of now(25 years, I'm 50) and I tend to have more problems speaking with family and friends and trying to use imperial again. Sorry but metric just makes more sense and is much simpler in my opinion. I do not think switching is hard at all. When you commit to it, it will take about a year to feel really comfortable with it.
Using Imperial in the USA? A loyalist! I hope you were tarred and feathered as is proper with your type. For real the USA never used Imperial, ever. You used US Customary, trust me. In fact our measuring system actually predates Imperial. Jefferson made US Customary in 1793 and Imperial wasn't devised until 1824. We only kept the language. We never used the system. In 1793 England used the Winchester system I believe it was called.
It's a matter of wanting. The US doesn't want. They view it as a matter of national pride, like if they switch to metric they'd be admitting they were wrong, or something like that. They'll say they use freedom units, that there are countries that use metric and countries that landed on the Moon, and so on. Not everyone, of course, but the country as a whole.
@@ironcito1101 no it is nothing like that. US Customary is just the superior system for practical use. If we thought metric was better then we'd use it. But it isn't, so we don't.
I grew up in Canada, then moved to South Africa 40 years ago. Part of my job involves specifying and working with large fans for underground mines. You basically need two measurements to define a fan - pressure (Pascals in metric and inches of water in imperial) and quantity (m3/s in metric and cfm in imperial). During my career, I went to many Canadian mines, and nowhere do they use metric OR imperial for both units. They always use metric for one and imperial for the other, but the kicker is that you will work with cfm and Pascals at one mine, then go down the road to the next mine, who use m3/s and inches of water. Utter madness!
I teach engineering courses in a USA high school. I teach both metric and imperial. But I do emphasize metric. One, it is easier to convert from one unit to another. Two, I find that our kids don't even know the imperial system well. So, this becomes a opportunity to teach/learn the metric system (which I believe should have been the standard long ago) and relate that to the imperial system that many of our kids continue to struggle with.
My country (Australia) gave up feet and inches when I was about 8 years old. I threw away my 12” ruler and bought a 30cm ruler. I remember my school teacher telling inches were gone. At 16 I went to work in a engineering factory where they had converted some of the designs into metric. Most of the machines were still graduated in inches. Many designs were written in metric but had just been converted (butchered) into metric so the inch sizes were still there in brackets. Thus fulfilling some government requirement. So I got to learn to work in some kind of inches/metric hell many years after we were supposed to have changed over. 25.4 was my friend. I’m now 60 years old and my milling machine is metric and my lathe is imperial. I often find my home projects still incorporate both systems due to the materials I have available or simply the things I’m trying to fix and where or when they were made. I’m sure similar problems exist in USA, Liberia, and Myanmar. The last three countries in the works still officially using feet and inches. You still have changing to look forward to.
One thing that's stuck with me ever since hearing it is something Shane from Stuff Made Here once said. Roughly paraphrased, it was: "A basic band saw, drill press, and belt sander are really all you need. With just those three tools, you can make almost anything."
@@OreoBambino Combine those two lists, and you have a fully functional Okie machine shop. I've upped my game since, but I did a lot of projects over the years with that basic set of fabrication tools.
You can make almost anything with just a hammer and a chisel. But it is going to be slow, difficult and likely come out poorly. Although if you know how to use a hammer and a chisel it is surprising what just that can do practically.
@@MarkLada table saws are an American thing. In other countries they're more into band saws. Woodworking lathes are pretty niche too. Turning is a thing unto itself.
I learned metric at school, but went on to use imperial AND metric as an apprentice welder/fitter. So handy to know that 19mm is 3/4", 1/2" is close to 13mm and so on. 😁
@simonelliott2945 That is very odd that carpentry rounds down when it comes to metric to imperial. Because 1/2 inch is actually 12.7mm. The other one I use frequently in my career is 25 (.4)mm is 1 inch which makes 100 (ish)mm convert to 4 inches.
@@calebdean2440 often when working with wood i prefer to round down because the material itself is not very precise. in furniture making or other very precise usage its a bit different, but if i am doing rough carpentry for like framing a wall the extra fudge factor helps
@mathus3311 That makes sense. I only work with metal fabrication and industrial electrical systems, and I didn't think about wood being less forgiving if all your measurements were measured too "large".
@@simonelliott2945 I understand that completely, I've noticed that manufacturers have shaved mm's off lumber so a 2x4 is actually only 45 or 47 by 95mm and so on. I don't know if that's just due to cost or whether modern timber is stronger so you get the same strength with less material. It's a pita calculating several 47mm spacings compared to the same 2" or 50mm. 😂
On the topic of working in both imperial and metric, you should check out the world of PCB design. Component footprints are usually specified in millimeters, unless it's a passive component (like a resistor or capacitor) in which case it'll be something like "0603" which means 0.06 inches by 0.03 inches, but be careful because there's also a 0603 metric that's equal to 0201 imperial. Trace widths and spacing are usually specified in "mils" (an industry term meaning 1/1000th of an inch), while board and layer thickness are in millimeters. Best of all, copper thickness is measured in ounces (yeah, go figure - "ounces of copper spread over a 1 foot square area" is implied). Overall board layout and dimensions are designer's choice between millimeters, mils, or inches, and a single board will often mix units for this. It's madness!
I'm an American carpenter who now permanently lives in Australia. In AU they have a unique "system" like the UK. I would describe the construction industry in 1/3rds. The first 1/3rd is true metric dimensions, the 2nd third are true inch dimensions(bright bolts are all inch in a hardware store, galv bolts are metric), the final third are what I call fake metric. These are products that were manufactured in inches, but labeled in mm for the Aussie market. One of the things that confuses people is centimeter. We don't use them. Only the medical system uses centimeter for height. We use mm for fine and m for gross. The best part is communication. You could be on a roof and yell down to the cut man. Cut me a stick 2754( twenty-seven fifty-four). Try that in feet/inch.
Ummm whatever hardware store you're going to, you should probably find a new one... also cm is used in many more industries such as furniture, textiles, packaging, primary school... i could go on.
@@BrendanRaymondKoroKoroIm an Aussie, furniture maker by trade, its mm not cm. Only ones who use cm for furniture is stores talking to everyday customers which has nothing to do with the trade.
@@BrendanRaymondKoroKoro I wouldnt list the average retail worker at a furniture store as being part of the furniture industry. From someone who both made furniture and did quotes to retail stores for custom made jobs, we had to train a number of the staff at different stores that we dealt with on how to draw up a simple quote for us to do. One time it would be written in cm, another mm, cm and mm on the one drawing. Occasionally youd have the goody of cm, mm and inches on one drawing. I dont know of any industy off the top of my head that would use cm over mm in the industry. Primary school doesnt count as kids need to learn the basics first and neither does the basic retail setting as there is no basic industry standard or training otherwise mm would be used. This includes measurements on packaging as this is intended for the average person of basic education to understand.
I have always used metric and am entirely comfortable with it ... but I taught myself all the most common imperial fractional sizes in metric so when I'm measuring a part I can quickly realise if that part is imperial or not. E.g. if something measures very close to 22.225mm it is actually 7/8" inch ... and when you realise that you start to see patterns. Like if you multiply 22.225(0.875") X 2 you get 44.45 or 1 3/4" (1.750”)inch
I am 46 and British so whilst I was taught metric almost exclusively in school, my parents grew up almost entirely on Imperial so it was pretty natural that I would get familiar with both. Even now the UK still uses both, miles for travelling distances, litres for fuel, a lot of us still use feet and inches for people's height and stones and pounds for people's weight, even though we use metric for almost all other weights and measures. Beer is still sold in pints as is milk (albeit converted to ml). Personally, I tend towards whatever makes the most sense or is easier to work with at any one times. For example if I am measuring something around the house and it happens to fall exactly on 2 and a half inches, I will go with that, if it fell on the marks for 35mm then fine, that's what I will use. I work as an engineer specialising in lightning protection so I work with a lot of structural drawings and those are almost always in metric no so that is what I work in professionally.
Interestingly enough the whole learning in imperial and changing to metric was something that happened to my parents generation in Australia, and by way of that to a lesser extent my generation as I was taught metric in school but needed to be able to speak imperial to my parents as an interpreter of sorts.
I grew up in the uk using metric at school and tech school,entered construction and switched back to imperial (working alongside a bunch of guys who refused to change) Then moved to Australia and it was back to metric.
@@crunchytheclown9694 You don't know how sense works. the Imperial system was developed over centuries by people who build things while the metric system was designed by theoretical scientists that wanted easier conversions. Imperial is objectively superior from a practical standpoint.
I am almost 50, here in the UK. I use both constantly, I will mix them up to what is easier at that time. I will often give measurements in both. As an example a little while ago I asked someone to cut both a 424 length of wood, and one at 8 inches. I can visualise something at 10 meters and also 5feet ( I know they are not the same length). I do tend to favour metric when it's small enough to start using fractions. But Miles, stone, yards, ounces, is my preference
If I'm doing precision work I always use the decimal inch. That's what my calipers read directly in. Generally around the house I don't need more than within a few thousandths of precision. Although when I worked as a tool and die maker I rebuilt devices to better than 0.0005" That's 0.0127 mm. Which you cannot visualize, or see with the naked eye.
Imperial vs Metric is an interesting question. I am 95% on the opposite side of creating; I either am checking things per tolerance to a production drawing- of which I have no choice of unit of measurement- or, I am working on an (typically ancient) automobile, usually for recreation and sometimes for needed repair. When I do have to create something, a bracket or ball end, or something, I use the convention the rest of the system is in. I definitely _think_ in Imperial, but with a huge caveat professionally- not in fractional expression, instead in the decimal equivalent. When I measure I am usually looking for +/- ,005". so in thousandths anyway...not much mental gymnastics vs metric there in terms of use (not distance). So I will first grab a half-nine wrench (1/2" on one side, 9/16" on the other, it's a common "US old car" tool) *BUT* I will many times grab a 13mm and 14mm wrench instead, depending if my experience with say, _this_ half inch bolt is in a spot that's a pain to get a 1/2 on so I use the 13mm, or _that_ 9/16 looks like it may strip, I'll hedge my bet with a 14mm, 99 times out of 100, that 14mm works like a charm on 9/16 for old US cars with less chance of rounding a hex corner. So while it depends on what I'm doing (and who made it) I'll use metric tools on cars that have no metric hardware! When you need it, it doesn't matter the measuring convention when it works.
I learned in metric (cm, mm etc) and always struggled as a kid with the imperial measurements, but because the sewing machine I inherited from my grandma and now as an adult use regularly is in inches, I have a much better eye for imperial measurements and always have to convert to inches if a pattern is in metric!
For interior design, a module of 80” is pretty close to 2 meters, a good approximation of overhead reach (if you’re 5’4” tall, lol) and it’s also 5*16” so you can build to this measurement pretty easily with studs on standard 16” centers and 4’x8’ panels
Can’t say this enough, and sorry for not being so articulate I want to (and not being english speaker..). But the moment when Adam pauses himself and explaining the words he just used (like in this example «awesome») is such a good manner and thing I like about him 🙂
When I was a teenager, I was an absolutely unrepentant nerd, to the point that I wore a novelty binary-display watch. I only had that watch for about a year (it was cheap and wore out fairly quickly), but it only took me a few months to actually start thinking of time in binary. My first class wasn't at 8:30 AM, it was at 01000:011110 AM. And I wasn't even _trying_ to do that, I only bought the watch for the geek cred. It just sort of... happened. It just goes to show that, if you actually use something new on a regular basis, you can learn it pretty quickly.
In almost all cases, if you're going to do things in metric you should use millimeters for small/medium scale stuff and meters for room scale or larger. Forget centimeters, they'll just serve to confuse you can cause you to have to carry decimals all over the place when millimeters provide sufficient precision at the integer level for most daily measurements.
@@1pcfred When your space program crashed billions of dollars of space-faring vessel into the surface of mars, it happened because of a conversion error. Someone forgot to convert away from metric and the entire mission was a failure as a result... So imperial isn't good enough for them. They stopped after that.
I was about 10 years old in the 70s when they started showing us metric in school. I was so excited as it seemed like such a great system. Through a lifetime as a carpenter I completely rejected metric in my work. If the US had continued on with the change as well, I'd be totally onboard, but all it has ended up doing is leading to 2 sets of numbers for everything. Even the lowly measuring tape is only useful on one side unless you go out of your way to find imperial only. They advertise food by the pound, but it's in kilos when you pay for it. Mt Robson is both 3954m and 12,972ft. Hard to remember both, and easy to mix up numbers. After 50 years, not sure what the solution is, but going halfway really just made a mess.
I struggle to visualise and work with imperial. I was taught both at school here in the UK but gravitated towards metric. I find metric easier to work with, much easier to do small measurements with and as the scientific and electronics worlds uses metric then I stick with that. Base 10 counting is more natural to me than fractional.
When we invented the monolithic integrated circuit and came up with the Dual Inline Package we set lead pitch at a tenth of an inch on center. So I don't know where you're getting that electronics is metric. Every breadboard ever made it on a tenth of an inch pitch. Parts datasheets are littered with the 2.54mm value too. That's a tenth of an inch.
@@1pcfred You know there is more to electronics than merely integrated circuitry and breadboards, right? Never mind the size of the chip, the layout of ANY circuitry I have EVER made was always metric. You're gonna be working on THAT, not on the inside of the integrated chip 🤣
@@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies I doubt our engineers were working in metric in the 1960s. We were the only ones doing the work then too. It is only very recently when metric has gained any traction and it is all with the younger generation. Who are all patently worthless anyways.
Love the drill press and mill discussion. Your point of "if your wondering get the drill press" is great. If you think you should get something to future proof then you wont likely use it. The metric vs imperial is great. I see imperial only good for approximation with metric for precision. Multiples of 10 are hard to beat.
Ever heard of decimal inch? Yeah...its base 10 too. We use it every single day in machine shops all over the US. We have air gages and indicators that measure down to 1 millionth of an inch. Is that an "approximation" to you?
@oldscratch3535 I was referring to the conversions between feet, inches, yards and so on when compared to millimetres, centimetres, meters etc. No discounting the accuracy or hating on the imperial system. But there is a reason that medical, science, aerospace industries use the metric system and that's accuracy and its universal application. At the end of the day if you work with the metric or imperial system and you get your job done to the required level of accuracy does it matter? My comment was just my opinion.
At my old job at [unnamed paint company], we also did an odd imperial-to-metric scaling. If we wanted to make a lab batch of paint, we'd have the software print out a recipe for a "4X" batch, which makes 400 gallons. If it said to add 23 pounds of an ingredient, we'd use 23 grams. With about 453.6 grams to a pound, this would fit comfortably in a 1-gallon can.
Living in Québec, I learned and used metric for most of my youth. Went to technical school in aerospace. Metric system out the window, here comes the imperial system. Went to college in engineering. Goodbye imperial and welcome back metric system. Start my first job for an aircraft manufacturer in North America. Imperial again, who cares about the metric system. New job for a European company. Metric again... I have been switching between both systems basically my whole life. I can now navigate between both quite easily, it all depends on what I am measuring. It really is an habit.
UK viewer here and this country awkwardly uses both. Roads, speed and distance are imperial as are weights and height for people but weights and heights for other things are usually metric. Petrol and Diesel are in metric, when shopping food is measured in metric, building items seems to be a mix of both etc. I'm also a cyclist and that's a sport that also uses both, frame geometry and weights are metric but wheel and tyre size is imperial, shock travel and disc rotor size used to be imperial but are now metric but frame sizes are usually still imperial etc. I feel Im personally thinking more in metric than imperial these days, the only thing that's gonna be hard to shift is using kilometres instead of miles
As an aircraft mechanic, it was always necessary for me to be able to cope with both imperial and metric hardware. As I discovered working on vintage aircraft, the French complicated things further during the sixties. Metric sizes, but with their own unique thread-pitch.
@@kaitlyn__L - SECAM was actually incredibly advanced for its time, it just didn't offer enough visual advantage over PAL to justify the extra cost. France also essentially invented the commercial / service-driven WWW decades before the WWW (Minitel / Télétel). They have a history of coming up with really advanced technology and then forgetting about it when the right time finally comes.
@@RFC3514 I’m aware that it stands-up better to signal degradation. But the wider point stands, a lot of French automotive engineering is different just-because as well. As to Minitel, there were other interactive view-data/text-data services, as far as I’m concerned the real innovation was in issuing the terminals for free to seed a wide customer-base. Other countries’ efforts at the same time charged for the terminals so only a few businesses used them. And that ultimately required decentralised BBSes for text, compatible with all computers, instead of having a standardised nationwide centralised network used by one type of terminal. Because all the other nationwide telecoms charges way too much for their standard.
@@kaitlyn__L - It's not just that it stands up better to signal degradation (and specifically to tape speed variations), it's the fact that it basically took a "digital" approach to video signals while still being compatible with analogue luminance and old B&W sets (and it originally had higher resolution than PAL, too). Overall, it was far too complicated to be worth it, considering the quality of the average home TV set (PAL is incredibly cheap and clever, by comparison), but it wasn't different "just because". You could also say Japanese standards (JIS) are different "just because", and most of those really have no technical advantage. JIS screws, for example, were "invented" (more like copied) right after Phillips head screws, and are slightly different... just because. That kind of attitude is actually a well-known problem with some Japanese companies (like Sony), that like standards so much they try to introduce a new one every week. ;-)
I was in school when we went metric, so learned both, then I worked for several years transposing old records that were imperial, into metric as we redrew the utility maps, after that a lot of the simple translations are still in my head, but I work with whatever is most conveniant, for smaller measurements its mm, when I get larger I move to inches, and then its back to metres, so its what you learned and what you became accustomed to.
The key to success when trying to change over from one form of measurement to another is to have an easy form of reference. Once you can eyeball a centimeter or millimeter, for instance when trying to switch to metric, you will find the process gets much easier. Due to 3D printing, I've got millimeters down. This means that I can get to just about every other scale of metric measurement fairly easy. And other than for temperature, I find its use to be far superior for my needs.
I do a fair bit of 3d printing also but because I'm in the US and make a fair few functional prints, a lot of my openscad scripts start with in2mm=25.4; It should be noted that stl files are actually dimensionless though. Treating them as mm is just a convention that has arisen.
Temperature makes as much sense to use metric as a measurement. Knowing that water turns to ice at 0 and steam at 100 makes more sense than 32 and 212.
I spent my early making years in the UK in the 60s and 70s where imperial measurements were the norm. When I was in my mid 30s I was working on a commission when an architect friend saw me struggling with calculation in feet, inches and fractions of an inch (oh hell, those fractions!). He suggested that I move to metric, one unit (the millimetre NOT the centimetre) and I've never looked back. The difficulty in making the transition is being familiar with, for example, how big an inch is or 6 inches or a foot but not being familiar with what 100mm etc. looks like. I would recommend anyone wanting to make the change to do two things: First learn that 1 inch is 25mm, 4inches is 100mm and a foot is 300mm. Commit these to memory and the rest is easy. Then throw away any tapes that you have with feet/inches on and buy a tape with METRIC ONLY measurements on it. I swear that your life will be easier without all those difficult fractions.
Both systems have their industries and best applications, at least in US/Canada. I could never build a house using the metric system but it certainly makes sense in science.
@@codemonkey2k5 Not OP, but in the US it's very hard to find lumber that's not in inches and feet. So if you design a house in metric, you'll end up spending a lot more for the materials, whether special-ordering them in metric or by planing/cutting down available stock to design size.
When I'm designing something on a grid it's easier to use metric as it's all multiples of ten. It's also good for small scale stuff. But I like how inches are longer than centimeters, but feet are shorter than meters. It's more precise than the meter, but less precise than the centimeter. So it's good for large construction that still needs some level of precision.
@@TylerDollarhidemy biggest complaint with metric is that 10 centimeters isn’t a common unit. i feel like it would be so nice but no one uses decimeters
I use both, as a matter of scale. Anything under a meter I use Imperial, over I use Metric. Yards and Meters is the only "close enough", that's why it's the exchange point.
I lived through Canada's transition and remember both metric and imperial on speed limit signs. Albiet I was young at the time. But my parents used imperial and I learned metric in school and so when cooking with mom, cups were used as that is all the cookbooks used. When working with dad in the shop he would measure in inches and thinking in fractions like 7/16ths to my brain seemed just wrong when you could use decimals... Now I find things are strange I move between the two. For my own clear thinking and measuring it is metric, especially with 3d printers and modelling. Makes the home depot trips interesting as all lumber is Imperial... However room temperature is 72 F for me. My height, weight are 5'10" and 185 lb. It is not natural to use metric for those for me. One area that is changing is with fuel efficiency in cars. I like MPG but I am trying to make the switch to Litres per 100 KM...
temperature and weight aren't too difficult to pick up. i set my thermostat and phone to celsius and it became natural to think in them within a week or two. Similarly, I bought weight plates in kilograms and in a month i could pretty easily tell how heavy 10, 25, and 100kgs felt. Height I have no clue though, it rarely comes up so i never get a sense of it.
You do know that there are roughly 1 million meters from the north pole to the equator? And that 1 cubic meter of water at 4°C (when it's densest) weighs one metric ton? What's unnatural about that? Water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C, what's unnatural about that? You're 70% made of water
Yes, Klausing made a drill press, I used to have one. It was old in the '70s when I got it in a trade for a Tektronix Oscilloscope. I had to leave it behind when I moved after being divorced. It was a monster, I had to take it apart to move it into pieces, even when I was young and strong.
Dear Adam, having been born and raised in the Netherlands makes me a metric kid. In general I would have to say mm and cm are my go to measurements. However, there definitely are circumstances when the imperial system proves its usefulness. 2”x3”s are still 2”x3”s in my book. As are the measurements of malleable fittings, pipe and their derivatives for threaded appendages in almost all water and gas pipe systems. Another circumstance where imperial is very useful, is the measurement for radiuses. Cheerio
I work in the automotive industry and our standards are measured out in metric, but all our equipment runs in SAE (feed rates, shunt height, alignment). With a little time, you develop thumb rules and an instinct for it.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I switch between both freedom units and metric. Both have their uses. It can get kinda confusing but depending on the project, I will decide which one. Sometimes I even use both in the same project. Lol. Like I said, It can get confusing but it works . 😊
Grew up building houses in inches… when I started Engineering, every machine I designed was in mm. HVAC is still primarily imperial. My general personal guideline is that if I’m building using a measuring tape (wood), it’s inches… if I’m using calipers (metals) it’s mm. Anything 3d printed is almost always mm. Life in Canada is often confusing… but you get very good at dual units.
Irish here, so European, and I use both. For a lot of day to day stuff… non-precise things, I will often use inches, pounds and miles. For anything requiring any precision, it’s grams, millimetres and so on. Might be my generation, but I am comfortable-ish with both. I don’t have an instinctive sense of say 64ths though, or fluid ounces, while I do have instinctive sense of all metric measurements
Another Australian here, who grew up with inches and went metric when we switched in 1975 (I was 17). Later I started working in graphic design, which, here, mixed metric with picas and points. While I'm pretty fluent in any of them, I mostly work (and think) in millimetres. Centimetres are - officially - a clothing measurement here. Makers and builders work exclusively in millimetres. The numbers get biggish when you're talking about a house, but you don't have to think about decimal points or fractions until you get to precise machining or fine woodworking. A key benefit with metric is the relationships between units. All the volume measurements are related to the metre: a litre is a 100mm cube. They, in turn, relate to weight: a litre of water weighs a kilogram. So a cubic metre of water weighs a tonne (=2,200lbs, so almost the same as a British 'long' ton). This makes it trivially easy to work out the volume of a vessel, or its weight filled with water, or an amount of concrete etc.
Nice discussion about the drill press and mill. As for imperial vs metric; grew up with imperial (USA), but work in healthcare, so also know a lot of metric since that's the standard. And as an added bonus use 24 hour clock - so much better (to me) once I got used to it!
The main difference between a mill and a drill press is a drill press isn't built to withstand lateral loading on the spindle. So you kill the bearings when you side load them on a drill press. Past that the drill chuck is usually only mounted with a Morse taper so it might just fall out side loaded. Which is never good. Drill presses are built to push down. That's it.
I use both. In the UK old equipment is usually fastened with imperial fittings, newer stuff in metric. I'm happy with either, and I have tools and tooling for both.
And there's the real pain in the backside. You have to buy two sets of tools. Worse, it is easy to mix them up - anyone who has had to work on old imperial measurement machinery will have rounded a 1/2" bolt head with a 13mm spanner, or cross threaded an SAE thread (or, worse, Whitworth if it is old British stuff) trying to put a metric nut on. It way, way past time the US joined the other 95% of the world using a more rational measurement system.
Woodworker here... Moving from imperial to metric is far easier if instead of using meters, centimeters, and millimeters we use only millimeters. Using mm is Sketchup has saved me tons of time with initial design and probably even more by reducing the errors that result in compounding errors of doing math with fractional measurements i.e. making 5 drawers each are 10 11/64" wide. That converts to 258.36mm. For this application I can just use 258.5mm, far easier to multiply and check my math before I build 5 drawers. For woodworking, I only needed a $12 metric tape measure and a digital caliper that can be switched between imperial and metric.
I use both, but it depends on context. In the PCB industry, like many others, the standard is mils, so imperial reigns when conversing with fab vendors... But we design everything in millimeter. At home, it's mostly metric because that's default in stuff like Fusion 360 and other CAD software.
I’m 22 and live in Italy so I used to use mm in the past years I get more familiar with imperial for work/youtube video and I like it. I think it’s useless changing completely from one to one other but the best way is to choose the one of your area but stay current with the other one
I can use either. If I need to use stock that's made in American units, it's usually simpler to use those. If the stock is metric it's wise to use metric. Unless you are doing something that needs to be replicated around the world, and I've argued this a LOT, neither is "better". The only thing about metric that is actually better is the relative ease of converting units. You need to be better at math and memorization to do the same with American units. I worked for a motorcycle parts manufacturer, and we would try to make anything that went on a Harley have American threading like 1/4"-20, but on a Yamaha we might use 6mm, because that wrench is in the bike's took bag already.
When building custom kitchen cabinets I wind up using story poles, inches, and millimeters. Inches for sinks, stoves, and dishwashers: millimeters for everything setup on the 32mm system: and the story pole as my checksum for alignment with center of windows.
I did everything in imperial until I started doing woodworking and then - being absolutely useless at fractions - I decided I would start working in millimetres cos then calculations are so simple that even I can do them. Now I use metric for most things cos it's so much easier and regular.
Mythbusters is the very reason I (an 25 year old man from Denmark, who grew up watching mythbusters with subtitles). Learned a lot of english, but also learned about feet, inches, miles and so on. So to that, thank you Adam
Goodness, that's exactly how I decide on whether to buy tools. With expensive tools at least. I'll take it one step further as I have several times bought cheap, and then buying another better tool because the first was not up to the job. That includes a drill press, and I now have Full Boar drill with 16mm keyless chuck, infinitely variable speed so you don't need to change belts, and a digital speed read out. I LOVE that drill press. I am about to upgrade my belt sander for the same reason, and have done the same thing with routers.
I highly recommend the old walker turner 20 inch drill presses (or the old rockwell delta as well)...I got one off of craigslist and cleaned it all up and not only learned all the parts so I understand more how it works, but got a great all metal should work for decades more drill press out of it. I saw two recently on craigslist for really cheap, and those would be great drill presses for someone starting out and needing something solid and dependable (and cheaper than the new ones of the same size which would have way more plastic in them, and likely smaller tables too). Also, drill presses are not designed to do sideways loads, so milling with them, even with an old one is a bad idea. The old walker turners and some of the rockwell delta also come with the big square production drill press tables vs the small round ones. That avoids needing to make a fancy bolt on square drill press table out of wood.
I am an automotive Diesel Mechanic who did a four year indentured apprenticeship in a workshop where we used metric, Japanese and European and yes there are differences in bolt sizes and thread pitches, American and Australian Imperial or sae, and British unf and Inc but also British Whitworth and British standard fine nuts and bolt let alone other measurements like Torque settings for bolts. I remember being taught to both read and use micrometers in both values and to this day have both in my toolboxes. Manuals were in English and American units THIER gallons have different amounts of LITRES or as in the US liters. One has to be careful just what one is reading and what measurement system is being used.
Having both old American cars & newer German cars, I've learned to use both. I had a Principles of Technology teacher in high school that explained the importance to learn the system that is used in the situation.
Just going to say I was really geeked when 1/25 scale was mentioned because that has become my default because I 3d print in millimeters and do my wood construction in inches. (My 3d printer is also rather small so I am limited on how big my models can be)
As an architectural designer, everything i do is metric, and that naturally extends to all facets of day to day life. Its simple, quick and accurate. I could not tell you what a metric measurement is in equivalent imperial but my dad, who lived through the change from imperial to metric in the late 60s (here in NZ) can understand and translate back in forth between both, which is a really invaluable skill that i wish i had.
Agreed! Metric or Imperial usage is habitual. I grew up with Imperial being the “standard”, but prefer metric since the conversion math is much easier & measurements seem to be more accurate.
I have a champion model F001 drill press that i bought from an older carpenter who was retiring, bought it to replace the smaller one that got stolen during a move, anyway I absolutely love it! I believe it’s 70s and it’s an absolute beast! By far the best 75$ I’ve spent on a tool
The Powermatic thing is like a stick welder, your best bet is buying a used Lincoln Tombstone. Minor note: a lot of the good used tool deals seem to have migrated away from Craigslist to Facebook Marketplace. I don't have an account, so I had to get my brother (who does) to tell me about a Lincoln welder popping up for sale.
I'm one of those who have changed entirely a couple of times. I'm an Engineer and I'm British, so I started my life almost entirely in metric. Post University I started working in the oil industry so I so had to use API units (imperial with a twist). After leaving the oil industry I now work entirely in metric again.
I started with a made in Taiwan mill-drill. Good for drilling. OK for wide tolerance and light milling. Then I invested in a used Deckel clone. Note that with a mill, you should expect to spend as much on tools and accessories as on the mill. Accessories include measuring instruments, work holding clamps, rotary table, vices, carbide tool holders, DRO, carbide inserts and more. A milling machine is only as useful as the the other things purchased for it. I learned with imperial, then the country changed to metric. I still use both metric/imperial but MUCH easier to work with metric.
I was a voting member of ASME Series standards including ASME Y14.100 and if you are working on a Government Contract the stated usage is US Imperial. Lots of reasons, for instance the US system builds on itself, currently there is discussion of changing some of the Metric values. Can you imagine after all of these years, changing what an Inch represents? Metric screws, ect are allowed. Just basic dimensions are in inches. I use both, but when I go to Lowes to get a 2x4 and I see 190mm or so I walk out. Not doing conversions now that I am retired.
I use metric and English interchangeably, often in the same project. When talking about linear measurements a lot of times english is better because it divides cleaner. Theyre just numbers with units next to them.
I keep a chuck in my mill most of the time, and sometimes use it even with end mills for situations where I don't really need accuracy. If I had to give up one of them, I'd get rid of the drill press without a blink. My mill is smallish, a 1970s Jet mill/drill machine, which is floor standing. A desktop mill/drill is pretty good as well, for smaller stuff. When I get more room (bigger shop coming up next year) I am going to look around for a Bridgeport. In Southeast Michigan there are Bridgeports practically sitting on the side of the road, you can get them for scrap price.
If you know that you are going to need to mill metal, get a drilling/milling machine. Like A rongfu 45 etc. But If you are going to only drill holes, get a column type drill press like arboga A3008. The feet is also a table. Head stock and the table can be rotated around the column, so the work piece can be on the floor for example. In short: Small work pieces and need to do some milling = bench top millingmachine with long quil travel. Large work pieces and only driling = column drill press. Large parts and need milling also = get both machines. Bench top drilling and milling machine is very good all around machine, if space and budget is limited and one needs to do some milling. If machine is only needed for drilling, then the column type drill press is the best choice.
Back in the late 1980s my middle school had an excellent wood shop. It was previously a high school and I believe it inherited all the vintage machines. From my memory I think it had a vintage green Powermatic.
Although a lot of thing in the UK were metric from either the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century (like BA treads based on 0BA that is 6mm x 1mm), the real change came with the Weights and Measures Act 1963. Around 1965, implementation got really serious and schools and industrial training boards were heavily involved in changing the habits of the entire nation. Certainly in Scottish education in the mid 60s, when I was at primary school, everything became orientated toward SI Units. At 11 years old I could probably have told you the definitions of most of the SI Base Units (Nerd!). So everyone here who is 65 to 70 years old now almost certainly began their formal education with imperial and lots of fraction and the switched to SI and lots of decimals. So we are a classic example of what you mention in the video. Most of us can probably still switch back and fore easily to this day. In my nerdy engineer case, I can take that to extremes but let's not get too boring. My father, educated in the 1920s and 30s, completely in imperial, loved metric, based largely on his experiences in WW2. So when metrication came along in the 1960s he was right into it and was on the local metrication committee of the Construction Industry Training Board. Many of his generation who were not regularly involved with industrial measurement really struggled though. The continued use of imperial units in the UK is quite superficial and anything of consequence is underpinned by metric measure. MPH speed limits and 2.27 litre (4pt) bottles of milk bizarrely live on. I would go so far as to say that generally, very few people in the UK truly understand imperial measurement now. I have a tendency not to trust anything that is measured in pints or feet since I expect it has been done by a person with a poor understanding of measurement.
I’m in the UK, which used imperial measurement for hundreds of years, including when I was at school in the late ‘60s and 70’s. So, I was brought up, and still think, in feet and inches. The UK started to move to the metric system after joining the EU in ‘73, but transition didn’t really take hold in school and shops until the mid ‘80s onwards. My children (gen Z) only know metric. So, I live in kg, km and litres - except (because UK) we still have pints of beer and milk, miles to destination on road signs, miles per hour and miles per gallon. I realise, having watched this video, that I measure larger sizes in inches but finesse in mm - for some reason I find it easier to be accurate in decimal - not sure I do the conversion in my head like Adam though (barely remember to measure twice, cut once!)
As for drill presses & mills - I have a milling machine and four drill presses. One of the drill presses is permanently set up for one thing. I use the mill and the drill presses often. If I set up the mill or a drill press for a specific project, then I have another drill press available if I need it without changing the setup on the others.
I learned using metric system and one of the advantages, I think, is that you only need to divide or multiply by 10. In imperial system you have 1 mile = 1760 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet 1 foot=12 inches. To translate a mile into inches in your head you need to 1760*3*12. Probably just a question of remembering, rather then calculating though. Now traditionally some things are measured in imperial units. The threads for pipes are often in inches (G1/2, G3/4 etc.) and I have no problem connecting them with millimeters. But if you start talking mass in ounces, or density in slug/ft3, I would need to check how much it is by checking conversion factors and doing calculations.
Just a note of caution on Drill presses vs Milling Machines, Drill presses are designed for the Load on the Spindle to be pushing into it with minimal side load, and a mill has to be able to hold the cutter up as the helix on the mill cutters pull downwards while cutting (and obviously handle a side load). ie a Drill press might not hold together properly if you are trying to mill with it. eg if you are using a morse taper setup in a drill press it may be pulled out if milling.
Adam, the neat byproduct of measuring in inches and modeling in millimeters, is retaining a 1:1 relationship. (as compelling as 1/25.4th scale is!) No math required! Fewer chances for mistakes, and easy to scale from the model to find a dimension you want.
On mill Vs. Drill press, it depends what you are doing with it. A mill vice can be very useful for precision work. Back in the 80's used one all the time to drill holes and mill out copper on copper clad board for circuit boards. It was time consuming, but made nice looking boards for prototyping. One turn for 1/10 inch made things really easy for DIP packages and other through-hole parts. On Inches Vs. Centimeters, Inches I find Inches to be an easier to use system for building things. Fractions make it really easy to half a measurement, and for precision work we switch to mil, thousandths of an inch. Over all I find that people that understand US Customary units have no trouble at all using Metric and can switch between and convert between them with little trouble, where as metric folk can't ever seem to be able to get their head around fractional units.
Growing up in Canada we had to learn and use both metric and imperial. Learning engineering was aldo the same, plus additional conversations. Working with colleagues & clients in the UK, Canada, and US has meant using both systems of measurement-also have to be aware of the difference in the English language for the three countries.
I like the 3 times a year metric (pun not intended but glad it happened) for borrow/rent vs buying. I’ve used something similar, though the exact numbers vary with the type of tool, fir my own decisions. My only problem with a metric like this is, being a real tool junky, I often have no problem talking myself into buying a tool (the conversation with myself usually takes less than 30 seconds 😁) even if I just need it once - some tools I’ve talked myself into buying even though at the time I had no use for them at all (once having a tool, I’ve generally found a use for it within a year, but I’m sure there are a few around that I haven’t ever used). As to imperils vs metric, I’m a retired engineer (electrical and software, not mechanical) and have to say I’m pretty comfortable with either, though having metric and imperial threads in the same item still drives me a bit nuts! You pretty have have to use imperial for construction projects (I’m not sure where you’d buy a metric stud in the US) and metric is the obvious choice for 3D printing, since all the printer parameters are I’m mm. I generally use metric for circuit boards, imperial for documents in stuff like Word or Visio, and other small projects can end up being either, depending on whether most of the parts are likely to be metric or imperial sizes. I’m getting ready to buy a mill and lathe for my garage shop, and I’m going imperils there with ones from Precision Mathew’s, but putting on DROs on both so the native system of the tools really doesn’t much matter - I expect about half the things I make on them will be in each system. In the end, they are all just numbers, so really not a big deal except when you want to do the math in your head, and even then I don’t know if one or the other is easier, depending on the sizes of the things your working with.
I use mm for anything I design that I plan on 3D printing. If I’m replicating something, I tend to use whatever is close to the stock piece. I also use inches for carpentry, because that is what is standard around here. It’s hard for me to think in metric for anything over 2 meters.
I use mostly imperial, but with my machinist background i will do most of my math in decimal and when I am saw things to width on my table saw, then I'll use my dial caliper along with a 1 inch travel dial indicator on a magnetic base. Then I can measure my wood parts and adjust the saw fence accurately with the indicator showing me what the fence is doing. Speaking of drill presses, I find that I need to support the table on almost all my drilling projects. I use a couple of different things. Machinists jacks work great, also I have a planer gage that I picked up along the way. Not many planers that need setting but the tapered slide works good for fine adjustments. The reason I support the table is as the drilling pressure increases, there will be deflection in the drill press and the drill will start cutting at a slight angle. Not a big problem on wood, but try drilling through some steel and you can literally see the drill press push itself apart. Mostly it is the table not being made strong enough, even my new Nikon drill press was doing it. That's why some people need to have a bridgeport. They are a lot more ridged in every aspect. These little combination lathe / mill things look like real pieces of crap. Most any small lathe is a piece of crap too.
Recently picked up a Powermatic 1200 myself, it's a beast. It's also very unusual to find a Powermatic in Australia. It's not my first drill press though (umm....6th) so I knew I needed a bigger one.
As a 47-year-old Canadian, I learnt metric in school, but imperial persists for many things like people and alcohol. But the big thing is that almost all carpentry and plumbing hardware in Canada is in Imperial because we're not a big enough market to be distinct from America. (And the change happened only a little before I was born, so until maybe 10 years ago the folks dominating these industries had grown up in Imperial anyway.) The result is that many things I can estimate or intuit in both systems and will switch as convenient. Often inside the same project - I was measuring a table for a diorama once, and my notes would have things like "this feature will be 12 inches long and about 2 cm wide."
I switch between metric and inches just fine as I am fluent in both. As I use metric at work. I personally think about it this way. Imperial is best for things that are relative to human scale, imperial is essentially base 12, and 12 is divisible by 2,3,4, and 6. Where metric is base 10, so it's core unit is divisible by 2, 4, and 5. So I use metric for precision measurements, and imperial for relative measurements. As for drill presses, I am very happy with my Wen. Can't be at the quality and price, I would describe it a one grade above entry level but very solid for that level.
I use both as ne essary but I prefer imperial or whatever the traditional measure/unit is for the activity i'm doing because it usually is in a natural fit for that specific task. And honestly most of the time I don't measure in units, I measure with with story sticks/story tape to get an exact size or use string or something else & bend/fold into whatever divisions i need. Super accurate & quick & i basically never need calculations, big disadvantage is passing the project off to someone else.
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On the choice/habit of units.
I recently came to a related realization about the units I use - growing up in the UK in the 1970's and 80's means I've always been fluent in metric and imperial, so I'm lucky that I can think and convert with no friction. I compounded this by studying astronomy which has a whole set of wacky units to deal with distances between planets and stars, as well as subatomic units and relativistic units. Oh and a lot of old astronomy books used a different kind of Metric units for good measure. So, when working on a problem I'll work in whatever units get me the answer fastest.
And now I'm a pilot I get feet, miles, nautical miles, celsius and pressure in inches of mercury when I listen to the weather, because this was something standardized by many nations in the past.
One of my favorite discoveries when learning SI units in high school physics was that you can choose to express simple ideas with intentionally wacky combinations of units, one of the best being 1 second = 1 ohm * 1 farad. So invariably when my friends and I were asking each about time estimates the ohm-farad would be invoked.
Hello illectro, fun to see you here
As a Canadian civil engineer I have to always, every single day convert between imperial and metric. The workers are usually in imperial, but the size of things are in both, I need to refer to both USA and European manufacturer and encounter old standards. In particular wood, sawn lumber is named in imperial, but is nominal sized, in actual imperial length but if assembled in engineered wood, it's in metric, also the wood building standard is pure metric.
So ya, total mess (excluding the rest of the Canadian unit weirdness, like oven in Farenheit, but outside temp and body temp in celsius, but sauna and pools in farentheit, flour measured in cups but but beef and butter in grams)
“Good measure.” Heh
I grew up in the US in the 90s, we were introduced to both metric and imperial systems. I can measure in either, but I *think* in imperial units, and when I am constructing or designing things for myself, to the extent that I do, it is naturally in imperial measurements. Cooking done with table spoons, pints, quarts, distance in inches/feet/yards/miles, fractions don't scare me, and weight in ounces & pounds. Do I understand what a gram, celsius, a liter, and a meter are? Sure, I'm familiar with the concepts and can use tools to measure in those units. But to truly wrap my mind around and understand it, I need to convert to more familiar units.
As a kid I used inches. When I started working in labs everything was metric. I adapted and can't imagine ever going back
For precision work then metric is better... for most maker things it's about acceptable tolerances and the Imperial system is great for that
Its interesting how people have different perspectives on measurements. I myself understand the metric system and how easy it is but still prefer imperial.
Personally I think using inches for woodworking is a must. An inch is the perfect size for measuring wood and making cuts.
Lots of imperial in the aerospace industry so I became accustomed to it in school. I prefer SI but I just don't see it often enough to make it the choice.
@@answeris4217 indeed.....we were measuring in femtolitres (10^-15)......not sure I would want to do that in imperial lol..
@@TopTierKnees is that because most of the aerospace companies are based in the US?
At my old job, I was the only one who used metric. The software we used had metric dialog boxes but has the option to display inches on the status bar. People resized things using the mouse, and were virtually never able to get 1.000 inches. One day, a manager came to ask me why I used metric, because apparently that was causing problems whenever anyone came to assist me. (I wrote measurements on the order forms in centimeters, sometimes millimeters.) The look on her face when I typed 25.4 in the Resize dialog box and got 1.000 inches was priceless. 😂
Sometimes progress just inches along.
Sound like a boat rocker
Looks at the definition of an inch, hey what do you know.. you're all using metric.
Im confused, what was this company doing such that not being spot on 1 inch wasnt a problem??
@@LethalLuggage
The part of the company I worked at did machine embroidery.
I’m old (70), and grew up with inches. Working construction in the 70s and 80s, I used imperial. Traveling the rest of the world in the 80s, I learned metric easily and adopted it pretty thoroughly. I shifted careers to textiles in the 90s, and I dye in a combination of metric and grains, but I weave in inches and yards. I guess I pretty much just picked up whatever was handy and learned my crafts in whatever system they were being taught in. I’m fast with math though, and numbers never have confused me.
It’s maybe a better idea than not to start about the Units of textile measurement….
@@misme2000 yeah, starting with yarn sizes!
I grew up with imperial units too and I still think in terms of feet and inches for everyday projects.
In an Asian country where they use metric, I thoughtfully converted my design from inches to metric.
The man doing the construction converted back to imperial because his catalogs showed materiel dimensions in "inches".
I have no doubt that metric is a lot better but after decades of thinking "imperial"
I can't readily visualize "how long is a foot in metric?" Oh, 30 cm, I've got it now.
However, temperature in degrees Celsius bothers me.
Celsius is such a large increment. Deg F is better for air conditioning.
In the UK we use a curious mix of Metric and Imperial and we tend to use Imperial for body weight (stone and lbs). I finally made the switch to metric for my bodyweight when I had to regularly have my bodyweight taken for chemo-radiotherapy. It has stuck and is a pleasant reminder of beating cancer.
That's nice that you have that from something bad. We also have imperial for road distances and speeds. I personally use imperial for a person's height and small guessed local distances but metric if I measure anything accurately. Weights have always been a mess to me, partly because I was taught metric but in the reality of the 70's and 80's, the country still primarily used imperial in shops etc.
yep we brits are an odd bunch. I was speaking to a joiner (Carpenter) on a job site one day as I was curious why he flipped between inches and cm/mm when measuring things. The answer I got was which ever numbers are closes to what ever I am measuring wins. So if he was measuring from left to right it would be inches and if he was measuring from right to left it would be cms
I also tend to use KG for weight as Stones and lbs make no sense what so ever and 83kg sounds much lighter than 184lbs I would much rather be 84 metric bags of sugar than 184 imperial bags of sugar :)
Any one round here use Miles and Meters instead of Miles and Yards :)
@@warrmr I've never used yards so I guess that would be me.
Also, I read your comment quickly at first and thought you said John Carpenter, as in the famous director and was going to ask what you worked on together. 😁
Just to be even weirder I use metric to measure temperature inside and summer outside weather I use Fahrenheit. Then in the winter I use centigrade.
70deg f is a nice heat, 0 deg c is chilly. 21 deg c indoors is a good target temperature. Odd init.
Depends on age. I'm a 33 year old electrician and the only imperial measurement that means anything to me are miles, and thats only because our speed limits and distances on sign posts are still measured in miles. If somebody tells me something is 500 yards up the road I will think of it as being roughly 450 meters.
Fahrenheit and lbs mean absolutely nothing to me. If somebody says its 90 degrees outside I immediately think "b***ocks water boils at 100 degrees, it's not that hot".
It's also a generational thing. My parents used imperial measures but we learned metric in school, so I tend to flip between both depending on what I'm measuring.
Exactly my experience. My parents were old enough that they grew up with imperial and imparted that knowledge to me through their own use but in school I learned metric as that was the standard by then. Today I tend to use imperial for estimating unimportant measurements "oh it's about 2 inches" but I measure and work solely in metric where accuracy is required.
nobody got time for 177cm when I can say 5'10" or 1/1000" when I can say 2.54 microns
@@apsilonblueexactly. I tend to find myself thinking in inches when cooking for example. Though funnily enough when we’re cooking together I’ve found if I tell my dad to chop stuff an inch long it’s 2-2.5 inches long, if I tell him to chop a centimetre long it comes out an inch long 😅
And that’s why my truck gets decent leagues per hogshead.
@@kaitlyn__L that’s why when I think on the scale of molecular structures I default to beard seconds.
I grew up with metric, but building and repairing guitars means that I've had to learn a great deal of imperial, as that's the industry standard measurement for designs and a lot of the luthiery tools one uses. It's helped by the fact that I inherited my grandfather's workshop and he always worked in imperial, having started his joinery apprenticeship in 1954 before metric was standardised in Australia.
Its actually a problem cos it's less precise. You needed to learn a worst system
Im Aussie aswell! My father owns an extensive toolshop, even in graphic design I only ever used metric but I can ask my father and size mm socket and he can tell me the imperial or close to equivalent haha I hate empirical its so painful! I do 3d printing now... I COULDNT IMAGINE going through settings in imperial
A lot of the old crafts were imperial because England was imperial. Bookbinding is much the same. Metric is BY FAR the superior choice but knowing both is a must if you do anything that has ties to the old world.
@@tecnogadget2 I'm not a machinist, so micron accuracy is not the goal for me. I think that all information is useful and therefore good. Happy to learn with both systems. The hardware used on guitars is made in a combination of metric and imperial, so if I want things to fit and line up correctly, I will use both systems.
@@tecnogadget2 Neither is less accurate or precise. They both have the same resolution too. You don't understand metrology at all.
When I started my apprenticeship we used imperial one year later we switched to metric, it didn’t take long to get used to it and it was actually easier and quicker to get accurate measurements.
I found myself finally switching to mm over inches when i wanted to make small PC enclosures, which are usually also compared to each other in Liters volume, and it is incredibly easy to figure out the volume in liters of a box by taking the 3 sides in mm and just multiplying them together, but trying to find cubic inches and converting was much more difficult. Now i just do everything in mm instead of inches.
That's why people who actually need to multiply and think jn multiple dimensions (instead of just measuring them) inevitably convert to metric. It's just a billion times easier
I grew up in the US using imperial but did learn metric a little in school. I also grew up on the Canadian border so that helped with metric. Joining the Army moved me a little more into the metric camp. There is a mix in the Army of both. I then went to Germany with the Army and that moved me even further to the side of metric. I then left the Army and stayed in Germany. I've been in Germany half my life as of now(25 years, I'm 50) and I tend to have more problems speaking with family and friends and trying to use imperial again. Sorry but metric just makes more sense and is much simpler in my opinion. I do not think switching is hard at all. When you commit to it, it will take about a year to feel really comfortable with it.
Using Imperial in the USA? A loyalist! I hope you were tarred and feathered as is proper with your type. For real the USA never used Imperial, ever. You used US Customary, trust me. In fact our measuring system actually predates Imperial. Jefferson made US Customary in 1793 and Imperial wasn't devised until 1824. We only kept the language. We never used the system. In 1793 England used the Winchester system I believe it was called.
It's probably hard if all your tools including big machines are in imperial, but sure it's not impossible.
It's a matter of wanting. The US doesn't want. They view it as a matter of national pride, like if they switch to metric they'd be admitting they were wrong, or something like that. They'll say they use freedom units, that there are countries that use metric and countries that landed on the Moon, and so on. Not everyone, of course, but the country as a whole.
@@ironcito1101 no it is nothing like that. US Customary is just the superior system for practical use. If we thought metric was better then we'd use it. But it isn't, so we don't.
I grew up in Canada, then moved to South Africa 40 years ago. Part of my job involves specifying and working with large fans for underground mines. You basically need two measurements to define a fan - pressure (Pascals in metric and inches of water in imperial) and quantity (m3/s in metric and cfm in imperial). During my career, I went to many Canadian mines, and nowhere do they use metric OR imperial for both units. They always use metric for one and imperial for the other, but the kicker is that you will work with cfm and Pascals at one mine, then go down the road to the next mine, who use m3/s and inches of water. Utter madness!
I teach engineering courses in a USA high school. I teach both metric and imperial. But I do emphasize metric. One, it is easier to convert from one unit to another. Two, I find that our kids don't even know the imperial system well. So, this becomes a opportunity to teach/learn the metric system (which I believe should have been the standard long ago) and relate that to the imperial system that many of our kids continue to struggle with.
My country (Australia) gave up feet and inches when I was about 8 years old.
I threw away my 12” ruler and bought a 30cm ruler. I remember my school teacher telling inches were gone.
At 16 I went to work in a engineering factory where they had converted some of the designs into metric.
Most of the machines were still graduated in inches. Many designs were written in metric but had just been converted (butchered) into metric so the inch sizes were still there in brackets. Thus fulfilling some government requirement. So I got to learn to work in some kind of inches/metric hell many years after we were supposed to have changed over. 25.4 was my friend.
I’m now 60 years old and my milling machine is metric and my lathe is imperial.
I often find my home projects still incorporate both systems due to the materials I have available or simply the things I’m trying to fix and where or when they were made.
I’m sure similar problems exist in USA, Liberia, and Myanmar. The last three countries in the works still officially using feet and inches.
You still have changing to look forward to.
One thing that's stuck with me ever since hearing it is something Shane from Stuff Made Here once said. Roughly paraphrased, it was: "A basic band saw, drill press, and belt sander are really all you need. With just those three tools, you can make almost anything."
@@OreoBambino Combine those two lists, and you have a fully functional Okie machine shop. I've upped my game since, but I did a lot of projects over the years with that basic set of fabrication tools.
@@OreoBambino I second the cordless drill, it’s my most used tool by far. I’d take it over a drill press if I had to choose.
You can make almost anything with just a hammer and a chisel. But it is going to be slow, difficult and likely come out poorly. Although if you know how to use a hammer and a chisel it is surprising what just that can do practically.
You absolutely need a table saw, and possibly a lathe too.. It depends on what materials you want to work with..
@@MarkLada table saws are an American thing. In other countries they're more into band saws. Woodworking lathes are pretty niche too. Turning is a thing unto itself.
I learned metric at school, but went on to use imperial AND metric as an apprentice welder/fitter. So handy to know that 19mm is 3/4", 1/2" is close to 13mm and so on. 😁
Interesting I’m a carpenter and we regard 18mm as 3/4 and 12mm as 1/2 because that’s the thickness sheets of ply etc come in
@simonelliott2945 That is very odd that carpentry rounds down when it comes to metric to imperial. Because 1/2 inch is actually 12.7mm. The other one I use frequently in my career is 25 (.4)mm is 1 inch which makes 100 (ish)mm convert to 4 inches.
@@calebdean2440 often when working with wood i prefer to round down because the material itself is not very precise. in furniture making or other very precise usage its a bit different, but if i am doing rough carpentry for like framing a wall the extra fudge factor helps
@mathus3311 That makes sense. I only work with metal fabrication and industrial electrical systems, and I didn't think about wood being less forgiving if all your measurements were measured too "large".
@@simonelliott2945 I understand that completely, I've noticed that manufacturers have shaved mm's off lumber so a 2x4 is actually only 45 or 47 by 95mm and so on. I don't know if that's just due to cost or whether modern timber is stronger so you get the same strength with less material. It's a pita calculating several 47mm spacings compared to the same 2" or 50mm. 😂
On the topic of working in both imperial and metric, you should check out the world of PCB design. Component footprints are usually specified in millimeters, unless it's a passive component (like a resistor or capacitor) in which case it'll be something like "0603" which means 0.06 inches by 0.03 inches, but be careful because there's also a 0603 metric that's equal to 0201 imperial. Trace widths and spacing are usually specified in "mils" (an industry term meaning 1/1000th of an inch), while board and layer thickness are in millimeters. Best of all, copper thickness is measured in ounces (yeah, go figure - "ounces of copper spread over a 1 foot square area" is implied). Overall board layout and dimensions are designer's choice between millimeters, mils, or inches, and a single board will often mix units for this. It's madness!
I'm an American carpenter who now permanently lives in Australia. In AU they have a unique "system" like the UK. I would describe the construction industry in 1/3rds. The first 1/3rd is true metric dimensions, the 2nd third are true inch dimensions(bright bolts are all inch in a hardware store, galv bolts are metric), the final third are what I call fake metric. These are products that were manufactured in inches, but labeled in mm for the Aussie market. One of the things that confuses people is centimeter. We don't use them. Only the medical system uses centimeter for height. We use mm for fine and m for gross. The best part is communication. You could be on a roof and yell down to the cut man. Cut me a stick 2754( twenty-seven fifty-four). Try that in feet/inch.
Ummm whatever hardware store you're going to, you should probably find a new one... also cm is used in many more industries such as furniture, textiles, packaging, primary school... i could go on.
@@BrendanRaymondKoroKoroIm an Aussie, furniture maker by trade, its mm not cm. Only ones who use cm for furniture is stores talking to everyday customers which has nothing to do with the trade.
@@UFO-047 thats what i was referring too. Of course carpentry trade use mm
@@BrendanRaymondKoroKoro I wouldnt list the average retail worker at a furniture store as being part of the furniture industry. From someone who both made furniture and did quotes to retail stores for custom made jobs, we had to train a number of the staff at different stores that we dealt with on how to draw up a simple quote for us to do. One time it would be written in cm, another mm, cm and mm on the one drawing. Occasionally youd have the goody of cm, mm and inches on one drawing.
I dont know of any industy off the top of my head that would use cm over mm in the industry. Primary school doesnt count as kids need to learn the basics first and neither does the basic retail setting as there is no basic industry standard or training otherwise mm would be used. This includes measurements on packaging as this is intended for the average person of basic education to understand.
I have always used metric and am entirely comfortable with it ... but I taught myself all the most common imperial fractional sizes in metric so when I'm measuring a part I can quickly realise if that part is imperial or not. E.g. if something measures very close to 22.225mm it is actually 7/8" inch ... and when you realise that you start to see patterns. Like if you multiply 22.225(0.875") X 2 you get 44.45 or 1 3/4" (1.750”)inch
I am 46 and British so whilst I was taught metric almost exclusively in school, my parents grew up almost entirely on Imperial so it was pretty natural that I would get familiar with both. Even now the UK still uses both, miles for travelling distances, litres for fuel, a lot of us still use feet and inches for people's height and stones and pounds for people's weight, even though we use metric for almost all other weights and measures. Beer is still sold in pints as is milk (albeit converted to ml). Personally, I tend towards whatever makes the most sense or is easier to work with at any one times. For example if I am measuring something around the house and it happens to fall exactly on 2 and a half inches, I will go with that, if it fell on the marks for 35mm then fine, that's what I will use. I work as an engineer specialising in lightning protection so I work with a lot of structural drawings and those are almost always in metric no so that is what I work in professionally.
Interestingly enough the whole learning in imperial and changing to metric was something that happened to my parents generation in Australia, and by way of that to a lesser extent my generation as I was taught metric in school but needed to be able to speak imperial to my parents as an interpreter of sorts.
Learned both as an apprentice 40 years ago, metric makes more sense when all is said and done
@@crunchytheclown9694 Saying metric makes more sense is like saying English makes more sense than French just because you speak it better.
Try marking out in fractions and then calculating fractions of a fraction on the fly@@Sammysapphira
I grew up in the uk using metric at school and tech school,entered construction and switched back to imperial (working alongside a bunch of guys who refused to change)
Then moved to Australia and it was back to metric.
@@crunchytheclown9694 You don't know how sense works. the Imperial system was developed over centuries by people who build things while the metric system was designed by theoretical scientists that wanted easier conversions.
Imperial is objectively superior from a practical standpoint.
I am almost 50, here in the UK. I use both constantly, I will mix them up to what is easier at that time. I will often give measurements in both. As an example a little while ago I asked someone to cut both a 424 length of wood, and one at 8 inches. I can visualise something at 10 meters and also 5feet ( I know they are not the same length). I do tend to favour metric when it's small enough to start using fractions. But Miles, stone, yards, ounces, is my preference
If I'm doing precision work I always use the decimal inch. That's what my calipers read directly in. Generally around the house I don't need more than within a few thousandths of precision. Although when I worked as a tool and die maker I rebuilt devices to better than 0.0005" That's 0.0127 mm. Which you cannot visualize, or see with the naked eye.
Imperial vs Metric is an interesting question. I am 95% on the opposite side of creating; I either am checking things per tolerance to a production drawing- of which I have no choice of unit of measurement- or, I am working on an (typically ancient) automobile, usually for recreation and sometimes for needed repair. When I do have to create something, a bracket or ball end, or something, I use the convention the rest of the system is in. I definitely _think_ in Imperial, but with a huge caveat professionally- not in fractional expression, instead in the decimal equivalent. When I measure I am usually looking for +/- ,005". so in thousandths anyway...not much mental gymnastics vs metric there in terms of use (not distance). So I will first grab a half-nine wrench (1/2" on one side, 9/16" on the other, it's a common "US old car" tool) *BUT* I will many times grab a 13mm and 14mm wrench instead, depending if my experience with say, _this_ half inch bolt is in a spot that's a pain to get a 1/2 on so I use the 13mm, or _that_ 9/16 looks like it may strip, I'll hedge my bet with a 14mm, 99 times out of 100, that 14mm works like a charm on 9/16 for old US cars with less chance of rounding a hex corner. So while it depends on what I'm doing (and who made it) I'll use metric tools on cars that have no metric hardware! When you need it, it doesn't matter the measuring convention when it works.
I learned in metric (cm, mm etc) and always struggled as a kid with the imperial measurements, but because the sewing machine I inherited from my grandma and now as an adult use regularly is in inches, I have a much better eye for imperial measurements and always have to convert to inches if a pattern is in metric!
For interior design, a module of 80” is pretty close to 2 meters, a good approximation of overhead reach (if you’re 5’4” tall, lol) and it’s also 5*16” so you can build to this measurement pretty easily with studs on standard 16” centers and 4’x8’ panels
4x8 panels don't really exist anymore. They're ever so slightly bigger at 2440x1220mm sheets because all the manufacturers use metric.
@MennilTossFlykune dilletante
Can’t say this enough, and sorry for not being so articulate I want to (and not being english speaker..). But the moment when Adam pauses himself and explaining the words he just used (like in this example «awesome») is such a good manner and thing I like about him 🙂
When I was a teenager, I was an absolutely unrepentant nerd, to the point that I wore a novelty binary-display watch. I only had that watch for about a year (it was cheap and wore out fairly quickly), but it only took me a few months to actually start thinking of time in binary. My first class wasn't at 8:30 AM, it was at 01000:011110 AM. And I wasn't even _trying_ to do that, I only bought the watch for the geek cred. It just sort of... happened.
It just goes to show that, if you actually use something new on a regular basis, you can learn it pretty quickly.
Wow. A binary watch 😂 That is most definitely the nerdiest thing I’ve heard in a long, long time.
You got a binary watch and it wasn't even a 24-hour one?
I was lucky enough to be taught on Imperial and Metric at school in the 70's due to the change over here in the UK.
In almost all cases, if you're going to do things in metric you should use millimeters for small/medium scale stuff and meters for room scale or larger. Forget centimeters, they'll just serve to confuse you can cause you to have to carry decimals all over the place when millimeters provide sufficient precision at the integer level for most daily measurements.
I can second that!
When our astronauts landed on the Moon they used feet for altitude measurements. Good enough for them, good enough for me. Phuck metric!
@@1pcfred They used metric internaly for their computers but converted it to imperial for the displays as the test pilots only knew imperial...
@@1pcfred When your space program crashed billions of dollars of space-faring vessel into the surface of mars, it happened because of a conversion error. Someone forgot to convert away from metric and the entire mission was a failure as a result...
So imperial isn't good enough for them. They stopped after that.
When I'm king of the world, centimetres will be banned.
I was about 10 years old in the 70s when they started showing us metric in school. I was so excited as it seemed like such a great system. Through a lifetime as a carpenter I completely rejected metric in my work. If the US had continued on with the change as well, I'd be totally onboard, but all it has ended up doing is leading to 2 sets of numbers for everything. Even the lowly measuring tape is only useful on one side unless you go out of your way to find imperial only. They advertise food by the pound, but it's in kilos when you pay for it. Mt Robson is both 3954m and 12,972ft. Hard to remember both, and easy to mix up numbers. After 50 years, not sure what the solution is, but going halfway really just made a mess.
I struggle to visualise and work with imperial. I was taught both at school here in the UK but gravitated towards metric. I find metric easier to work with, much easier to do small measurements with and as the scientific and electronics worlds uses metric then I stick with that. Base 10 counting is more natural to me than fractional.
When we invented the monolithic integrated circuit and came up with the Dual Inline Package we set lead pitch at a tenth of an inch on center. So I don't know where you're getting that electronics is metric. Every breadboard ever made it on a tenth of an inch pitch. Parts datasheets are littered with the 2.54mm value too. That's a tenth of an inch.
@@1pcfred And copper weight in oz, traces in mils, etc. But that is shifting and newer standards tend to be metric.
@@1pcfred You know there is more to electronics than merely integrated circuitry and breadboards, right? Never mind the size of the chip, the layout of ANY circuitry I have EVER made was always metric. You're gonna be working on THAT, not on the inside of the integrated chip 🤣
@@BruceNJeffAreMyFlies I doubt our engineers were working in metric in the 1960s. We were the only ones doing the work then too. It is only very recently when metric has gained any traction and it is all with the younger generation. Who are all patently worthless anyways.
@@Dukey8668 yes I've noticed the rush to the bottom going on all around me. C'est la vie.
When I built model car kits, most of which are in 1:25 scale, I used mm as inches when scratchbuilding parts and it worked like a charm.
Love the drill press and mill discussion. Your point of "if your wondering get the drill press" is great. If you think you should get something to future proof then you wont likely use it.
The metric vs imperial is great. I see imperial only good for approximation with metric for precision. Multiples of 10 are hard to beat.
Only if you work in base 10. Base 12 would be better overall but that's not going to happen.
@@chaos.corner why would base 12 be better? The simplicity of moving a decimal is the part that I love about the metric system.
Ever heard of decimal inch? Yeah...its base 10 too. We use it every single day in machine shops all over the US. We have air gages and indicators that measure down to 1 millionth of an inch. Is that an "approximation" to you?
@oldscratch3535 I was referring to the conversions between feet, inches, yards and so on when compared to millimetres, centimetres, meters etc. No discounting the accuracy or hating on the imperial system. But there is a reason that medical, science, aerospace industries use the metric system and that's accuracy and its universal application. At the end of the day if you work with the metric or imperial system and you get your job done to the required level of accuracy does it matter? My comment was just my opinion.
@@chaos.corner That's just cope. The extra factors of 12 compared to 10 wouldn't really be that useful in 2023.
At my old job at [unnamed paint company], we also did an odd imperial-to-metric scaling. If we wanted to make a lab batch of paint, we'd have the software print out a recipe for a "4X" batch, which makes 400 gallons. If it said to add 23 pounds of an ingredient, we'd use 23 grams. With about 453.6 grams to a pound, this would fit comfortably in a 1-gallon can.
Doesn’t get anymore Savage than this 🤘
Living in Québec, I learned and used metric for most of my youth. Went to technical school in aerospace. Metric system out the window, here comes the imperial system. Went to college in engineering. Goodbye imperial and welcome back metric system. Start my first job for an aircraft manufacturer in North America. Imperial again, who cares about the metric system. New job for a European company. Metric again... I have been switching between both systems basically my whole life. I can now navigate between both quite easily, it all depends on what I am measuring. It really is an habit.
8:00 minutes in for inches vs cm part
UK viewer here and this country awkwardly uses both. Roads, speed and distance are imperial as are weights and height for people but weights and heights for other things are usually metric. Petrol and Diesel are in metric, when shopping food is measured in metric, building items seems to be a mix of both etc.
I'm also a cyclist and that's a sport that also uses both, frame geometry and weights are metric but wheel and tyre size is imperial, shock travel and disc rotor size used to be imperial but are now metric but frame sizes are usually still imperial etc.
I feel Im personally thinking more in metric than imperial these days, the only thing that's gonna be hard to shift is using kilometres instead of miles
As an aircraft mechanic, it was always necessary for me to be able to cope with both imperial and metric hardware. As I discovered working on vintage aircraft, the French complicated things further during the sixties. Metric sizes, but with their own unique thread-pitch.
French engineers do love to do things differently just because. See also SECAM instead of PAL.
@@kaitlyn__L - SECAM was actually incredibly advanced for its time, it just didn't offer enough visual advantage over PAL to justify the extra cost. France also essentially invented the commercial / service-driven WWW decades before the WWW (Minitel / Télétel). They have a history of coming up with really advanced technology and then forgetting about it when the right time finally comes.
@@RFC3514 I’m aware that it stands-up better to signal degradation. But the wider point stands, a lot of French automotive engineering is different just-because as well.
As to Minitel, there were other interactive view-data/text-data services, as far as I’m concerned the real innovation was in issuing the terminals for free to seed a wide customer-base.
Other countries’ efforts at the same time charged for the terminals so only a few businesses used them. And that ultimately required decentralised BBSes for text, compatible with all computers, instead of having a standardised nationwide centralised network used by one type of terminal. Because all the other nationwide telecoms charges way too much for their standard.
Metric thread pitch is ass even in the best of circumstances.
@@kaitlyn__L - It's not just that it stands up better to signal degradation (and specifically to tape speed variations), it's the fact that it basically took a "digital" approach to video signals while still being compatible with analogue luminance and old B&W sets (and it originally had higher resolution than PAL, too).
Overall, it was far too complicated to be worth it, considering the quality of the average home TV set (PAL is incredibly cheap and clever, by comparison), but it wasn't different "just because".
You could also say Japanese standards (JIS) are different "just because", and most of those really have no technical advantage. JIS screws, for example, were "invented" (more like copied) right after Phillips head screws, and are slightly different... just because. That kind of attitude is actually a well-known problem with some Japanese companies (like Sony), that like standards so much they try to introduce a new one every week. ;-)
I was in school when we went metric, so learned both, then I worked for several years transposing old records that were imperial, into metric as we redrew the utility maps, after that a lot of the simple translations are still in my head, but I work with whatever is most conveniant, for smaller measurements its mm, when I get larger I move to inches, and then its back to metres, so its what you learned and what you became accustomed to.
The key to success when trying to change over from one form of measurement to another is to have an easy form of reference. Once you can eyeball a centimeter or millimeter, for instance when trying to switch to metric, you will find the process gets much easier. Due to 3D printing, I've got millimeters down. This means that I can get to just about every other scale of metric measurement fairly easy. And other than for temperature, I find its use to be far superior for my needs.
I do a fair bit of 3d printing also but because I'm in the US and make a fair few functional prints, a lot of my openscad scripts start with in2mm=25.4;
It should be noted that stl files are actually dimensionless though. Treating them as mm is just a convention that has arisen.
@@chaos.corner being dimensionless actually scales the easiest. One of life’s little oddities.
@@hugegamer5988Yes. Though I believe the obj format that intends to be stl's replacement is specific about dimensions.
Temperature makes as much sense to use metric as a measurement. Knowing that water turns to ice at 0 and steam at 100 makes more sense than 32 and 212.
@@davidmurn772 Marginally. It's still arbitrary and not even correct depending on conditions. Kelvin gets closer.
I spent my early making years in the UK in the 60s and 70s where imperial measurements were the norm. When I was in my mid 30s I was working on a commission when an architect friend saw me struggling with calculation in feet, inches and fractions of an inch (oh hell, those fractions!). He suggested that I move to metric, one unit (the millimetre NOT the centimetre) and I've never looked back. The difficulty in making the transition is being familiar with, for example, how big an inch is or 6 inches or a foot but not being familiar with what 100mm etc. looks like. I would recommend anyone wanting to make the change to do two things: First learn that 1 inch is 25mm, 4inches is 100mm and a foot is 300mm. Commit these to memory and the rest is easy. Then throw away any tapes that you have with feet/inches on and buy a tape with METRIC ONLY measurements on it. I swear that your life will be easier without all those difficult fractions.
20 years in Structural building engineering, always in metric, imperial is a real pain in the a$$.
For me it's a choice. I like base 12 for things that don't scale a whole lot, meanwhile I like base 10 for standardization of things that scale a lot.
Is that because the fractions of an inch are base-2?
Both systems have their industries and best applications, at least in US/Canada. I could never build a house using the metric system but it certainly makes sense in science.
Interesting, can you elaborate if you have a moment?
@@codemonkey2k5 Not OP, but in the US it's very hard to find lumber that's not in inches and feet. So if you design a house in metric, you'll end up spending a lot more for the materials, whether special-ordering them in metric or by planing/cutting down available stock to design size.
When I'm designing something on a grid it's easier to use metric as it's all multiples of ten. It's also good for small scale stuff.
But I like how inches are longer than centimeters, but feet are shorter than meters. It's more precise than the meter, but less precise than the centimeter. So it's good for large construction that still needs some level of precision.
@@TylerDollarhidemy biggest complaint with metric is that 10 centimeters isn’t a common unit. i feel like it would be so nice but no one uses decimeters
Only 95% of the human use metric
I use both, as a matter of scale. Anything under a meter I use Imperial, over I use Metric. Yards and Meters is the only "close enough", that's why it's the exchange point.
I lived through Canada's transition and remember both metric and imperial on speed limit signs. Albiet I was young at the time. But my parents used imperial and I learned metric in school and so when cooking with mom, cups were used as that is all the cookbooks used. When working with dad in the shop he would measure in inches and thinking in fractions like 7/16ths to my brain seemed just wrong when you could use decimals...
Now I find things are strange I move between the two. For my own clear thinking and measuring it is metric, especially with 3d printers and modelling. Makes the home depot trips interesting as all lumber is Imperial... However room temperature is 72 F for me. My height, weight are 5'10" and 185 lb. It is not natural to use metric for those for me. One area that is changing is with fuel efficiency in cars. I like MPG but I am trying to make the switch to Litres per 100 KM...
Boy does that sound familiar, I bet we are nearly the same age with similar interests. Now are we talking imperial or US gallons?
temperature and weight aren't too difficult to pick up. i set my thermostat and phone to celsius and it became natural to think in them within a week or two. Similarly, I bought weight plates in kilograms and in a month i could pretty easily tell how heavy 10, 25, and 100kgs felt. Height I have no clue though, it rarely comes up so i never get a sense of it.
You do know that there are roughly 1 million meters from the north pole to the equator? And that 1 cubic meter of water at 4°C (when it's densest) weighs one metric ton? What's unnatural about that? Water freezes at 0°C and boils at 100°C, what's unnatural about that? You're 70% made of water
@@Formula7Driver 10 million meters from the north pole to the equator
@@dwaynepenner2788, no, that's the distance from the south pole
Yes, Klausing made a drill press, I used to have one. It was old in the '70s when I got it in a trade for a Tektronix Oscilloscope. I had to leave it behind when I moved after being divorced. It was a monster, I had to take it apart to move it into pieces, even when I was young and strong.
Dear Adam, having been born and raised in the Netherlands makes me a metric kid. In general I would have to say mm and cm are my go to measurements. However, there definitely are circumstances when the imperial system proves its usefulness. 2”x3”s are still 2”x3”s in my book. As are the measurements of malleable fittings, pipe and their derivatives for threaded appendages in almost all water and gas pipe systems. Another circumstance where imperial is very useful, is the measurement for radiuses. Cheerio
I use mm when 3d printing for whatever reason
I work in the automotive industry and our standards are measured out in metric, but all our equipment runs in SAE (feed rates, shunt height, alignment). With a little time, you develop thumb rules and an instinct for it.
Maybe I'm just weird, but I switch between both freedom units and metric. Both have their uses. It can get kinda confusing but depending on the project, I will decide which one. Sometimes I even use both in the same project. Lol. Like I said, It can get confusing but it works . 😊
Yeah anything over an inch use imperial anything smaller use metric
Idiot units and metric. It's only the US and Liberia that uses it.
you mean between freedom units and cheese eating surrender units.
@@kenbrown2808 😂
@@captainwin6333 awwwww, did I hurt ur little feelings by calling them freedom units. Lol.
Grew up building houses in inches… when I started Engineering, every machine I designed was in mm. HVAC is still primarily imperial.
My general personal guideline is that if I’m building using a measuring tape (wood), it’s inches… if I’m using calipers (metals) it’s mm.
Anything 3d printed is almost always mm.
Life in Canada is often confusing… but you get very good at dual units.
Well, in Europe, almost nobody would ever even think about this question...
Irish here, so European, and I use both. For a lot of day to day stuff… non-precise things, I will often use inches, pounds and miles. For anything requiring any precision, it’s grams, millimetres and so on. Might be my generation, but I am comfortable-ish with both. I don’t have an instinctive sense of say 64ths though, or fluid ounces, while I do have instinctive sense of all metric measurements
@@gerrykavanagh well, sorry, I forgot that the islands are still stuck in the dark ages
Another Australian here, who grew up with inches and went metric when we switched in 1975 (I was 17). Later I started working in graphic design, which, here, mixed metric with picas and points. While I'm pretty fluent in any of them, I mostly work (and think) in millimetres. Centimetres are - officially - a clothing measurement here. Makers and builders work exclusively in millimetres. The numbers get biggish when you're talking about a house, but you don't have to think about decimal points or fractions until you get to precise machining or fine woodworking.
A key benefit with metric is the relationships between units. All the volume measurements are related to the metre: a litre is a 100mm cube. They, in turn, relate to weight: a litre of water weighs a kilogram. So a cubic metre of water weighs a tonne (=2,200lbs, so almost the same as a British 'long' ton). This makes it trivially easy to work out the volume of a vessel, or its weight filled with water, or an amount of concrete etc.
Metric is so logical
I’m trying go completely metric
Nice discussion about the drill press and mill. As for imperial vs metric; grew up with imperial (USA), but work in healthcare, so also know a lot of metric since that's the standard. And as an added bonus use 24 hour clock - so much better (to me) once I got used to it!
The main difference between a mill and a drill press is a drill press isn't built to withstand lateral loading on the spindle. So you kill the bearings when you side load them on a drill press. Past that the drill chuck is usually only mounted with a Morse taper so it might just fall out side loaded. Which is never good. Drill presses are built to push down. That's it.
The metric system ruined my life.
How?
@@CITYBORNDESERTBRED Of course, as expected, _crickets_
I use both. In the UK old equipment is usually fastened with imperial fittings, newer stuff in metric.
I'm happy with either, and I have tools and tooling for both.
And there's the real pain in the backside. You have to buy two sets of tools. Worse, it is easy to mix them up - anyone who has had to work on old imperial measurement machinery will have rounded a 1/2" bolt head with a 13mm spanner, or cross threaded an SAE thread (or, worse, Whitworth if it is old British stuff) trying to put a metric nut on. It way, way past time the US joined the other 95% of the world using a more rational measurement system.
I heard the guys with small ones tend to use centimetres 😃
I guess you use mils then.
@@Okurka. if you can’t have a big member at least you can have a big number.
0:39 Adam as a professional model(er) yes please! Thanks for all of your continued advice and entertainment!
Woodworker here...
Moving from imperial to metric is far easier if instead of using meters, centimeters, and millimeters we use only millimeters.
Using mm is Sketchup has saved me tons of time with initial design and probably even more by reducing the errors that result in compounding errors of doing math with fractional measurements i.e. making 5 drawers each are 10 11/64" wide. That converts to 258.36mm. For this application I can just use 258.5mm, far easier to multiply and check my math before I build 5 drawers.
For woodworking, I only needed a $12 metric tape measure and a digital caliper that can be switched between imperial and metric.
I use both, but it depends on context. In the PCB industry, like many others, the standard is mils, so imperial reigns when conversing with fab vendors... But we design everything in millimeter. At home, it's mostly metric because that's default in stuff like Fusion 360 and other CAD software.
I’m 22 and live in Italy so I used to use mm in the past years I get more familiar with imperial for work/youtube video and I like it. I think it’s useless changing completely from one to one other but the best way is to choose the one of your area but stay current with the other one
You are wrong.😂
Its my opinion
I can use either. If I need to use stock that's made in American units, it's usually simpler to use those. If the stock is metric it's wise to use metric. Unless you are doing something that needs to be replicated around the world, and I've argued this a LOT, neither is "better". The only thing about metric that is actually better is the relative ease of converting units. You need to be better at math and memorization to do the same with American units.
I worked for a motorcycle parts manufacturer, and we would try to make anything that went on a Harley have American threading like 1/4"-20, but on a Yamaha we might use 6mm, because that wrench is in the bike's took bag already.
When building custom kitchen cabinets I wind up using story poles, inches, and millimeters. Inches for sinks, stoves, and dishwashers: millimeters for everything setup on the 32mm system: and the story pole as my checksum for alignment with center of windows.
I did everything in imperial until I started doing woodworking and then - being absolutely useless at fractions - I decided I would start working in millimetres cos then calculations are so simple that even I can do them. Now I use metric for most things cos it's so much easier and regular.
Mythbusters is the very reason I (an 25 year old man from Denmark, who grew up watching mythbusters with subtitles). Learned a lot of english, but also learned about feet, inches, miles and so on. So to that, thank you Adam
Goodness, that's exactly how I decide on whether to buy tools. With expensive tools at least. I'll take it one step further as I have several times bought cheap, and then buying another better tool because the first was not up to the job. That includes a drill press, and I now have Full Boar drill with 16mm keyless chuck, infinitely variable speed so you don't need to change belts, and a digital speed read out. I LOVE that drill press. I am about to upgrade my belt sander for the same reason, and have done the same thing with routers.
I highly recommend the old walker turner 20 inch drill presses (or the old rockwell delta as well)...I got one off of craigslist and cleaned it all up and not only learned all the parts so I understand more how it works, but got a great all metal should work for decades more drill press out of it. I saw two recently on craigslist for really cheap, and those would be great drill presses for someone starting out and needing something solid and dependable (and cheaper than the new ones of the same size which would have way more plastic in them, and likely smaller tables too). Also, drill presses are not designed to do sideways loads, so milling with them, even with an old one is a bad idea. The old walker turners and some of the rockwell delta also come with the big square production drill press tables vs the small round ones. That avoids needing to make a fancy bolt on square drill press table out of wood.
I am an automotive Diesel Mechanic who did a four year indentured apprenticeship in a workshop where we used metric, Japanese and European and yes there are differences in bolt sizes and thread pitches, American and Australian Imperial or sae, and British unf and Inc but also British Whitworth and British standard fine nuts and bolt let alone other measurements like Torque settings for bolts. I remember being taught to both read and use micrometers in both values and to this day have both in my toolboxes. Manuals were in English and American units THIER gallons have different amounts of LITRES or as in the US liters. One has to be careful just what one is reading and what measurement system is being used.
Having both old American cars & newer German cars, I've learned to use both.
I had a Principles of Technology teacher in high school that explained the importance to learn the system that is used in the situation.
Just going to say I was really geeked when 1/25 scale was mentioned because that has become my default because I 3d print in millimeters and do my wood construction in inches. (My 3d printer is also rather small so I am limited on how big my models can be)
As an architectural designer, everything i do is metric, and that naturally extends to all facets of day to day life. Its simple, quick and accurate. I could not tell you what a metric measurement is in equivalent imperial but my dad, who lived through the change from imperial to metric in the late 60s (here in NZ) can understand and translate back in forth between both, which is a really invaluable skill that i wish i had.
Agreed! Metric or Imperial usage is habitual. I grew up with Imperial being the “standard”, but prefer metric since the conversion math is much easier & measurements seem to be more accurate.
I have a champion model F001 drill press that i bought from an older carpenter who was retiring, bought it to replace the smaller one that got stolen during a move, anyway I absolutely love it! I believe it’s 70s and it’s an absolute beast! By far the best 75$ I’ve spent on a tool
The Powermatic thing is like a stick welder, your best bet is buying a used Lincoln Tombstone. Minor note: a lot of the good used tool deals seem to have migrated away from Craigslist to Facebook Marketplace. I don't have an account, so I had to get my brother (who does) to tell me about a Lincoln welder popping up for sale.
Most of my making over the years have been with 3D printing and lasers and those generally work in metric and I’m happy to say that’s my focus.
I'm one of those who have changed entirely a couple of times. I'm an Engineer and I'm British, so I started my life almost entirely in metric. Post University I started working in the oil industry so I so had to use API units (imperial with a twist). After leaving the oil industry I now work entirely in metric again.
I started with a made in Taiwan mill-drill. Good for drilling. OK for wide tolerance and light milling. Then I invested in a used Deckel clone. Note that with a mill, you should expect to spend as much on tools and accessories as on the mill. Accessories include measuring instruments, work holding clamps, rotary table, vices, carbide tool holders, DRO, carbide inserts and more. A milling machine is only as useful as the the other things purchased for it. I learned with imperial, then the country changed to metric. I still use both metric/imperial but MUCH easier to work with metric.
I was a voting member of ASME Series standards including ASME Y14.100 and if you are working on a Government Contract the stated usage is US Imperial. Lots of reasons, for instance the US system builds on itself, currently there is discussion of changing some of the Metric values. Can you imagine after all of these years, changing what an Inch represents? Metric screws, ect are allowed. Just basic dimensions are in inches. I use both, but when I go to Lowes to get a 2x4 and I see 190mm or so I walk out. Not doing conversions now that I am retired.
I use metric and English interchangeably, often in the same project. When talking about linear measurements a lot of times english is better because it divides cleaner. Theyre just numbers with units next to them.
I keep a chuck in my mill most of the time, and sometimes use it even with end mills for situations where I don't really need accuracy. If I had to give up one of them, I'd get rid of the drill press without a blink. My mill is smallish, a 1970s Jet mill/drill machine, which is floor standing. A desktop mill/drill is pretty good as well, for smaller stuff. When I get more room (bigger shop coming up next year) I am going to look around for a Bridgeport. In Southeast Michigan there are Bridgeports practically sitting on the side of the road, you can get them for scrap price.
If you know that you are going to need to mill metal, get a drilling/milling machine. Like A rongfu 45 etc. But If you are going to only drill holes, get a column type drill press like arboga A3008. The feet is also a table. Head stock and the table can be rotated around the column, so the work piece can be on the floor for example. In short: Small work pieces and need to do some milling = bench top millingmachine with long quil travel. Large work pieces and only driling = column drill press. Large parts and need milling also = get both machines. Bench top drilling and milling machine is very good all around machine, if space and budget is limited and one needs to do some milling. If machine is only needed for drilling, then the column type drill press is the best choice.
Back in the late 1980s my middle school had an excellent wood shop. It was previously a high school and I believe it inherited all the vintage machines. From my memory I think it had a vintage green Powermatic.
Although a lot of thing in the UK were metric from either the late nineteenth century or early twentieth century (like BA treads based on 0BA that is 6mm x 1mm), the real change came with the Weights and Measures Act 1963. Around 1965, implementation got really serious and schools and industrial training boards were heavily involved in changing the habits of the entire nation. Certainly in Scottish education in the mid 60s, when I was at primary school, everything became orientated toward SI Units. At 11 years old I could probably have told you the definitions of most of the SI Base Units (Nerd!).
So everyone here who is 65 to 70 years old now almost certainly began their formal education with imperial and lots of fraction and the switched to SI and lots of decimals. So we are a classic example of what you mention in the video. Most of us can probably still switch back and fore easily to this day. In my nerdy engineer case, I can take that to extremes but let's not get too boring.
My father, educated in the 1920s and 30s, completely in imperial, loved metric, based largely on his experiences in WW2. So when metrication came along in the 1960s he was right into it and was on the local metrication committee of the Construction Industry Training Board. Many of his generation who were not regularly involved with industrial measurement really struggled though.
The continued use of imperial units in the UK is quite superficial and anything of consequence is underpinned by metric measure. MPH speed limits and 2.27 litre (4pt) bottles of milk bizarrely live on. I would go so far as to say that generally, very few people in the UK truly understand imperial measurement now. I have a tendency not to trust anything that is measured in pints or feet since I expect it has been done by a person with a poor understanding of measurement.
I’m in the UK, which used imperial measurement for hundreds of years, including when I was at school in the late ‘60s and 70’s. So, I was brought up, and still think, in feet and inches. The UK started to move to the metric system after joining the EU in ‘73, but transition didn’t really take hold in school and shops until the mid ‘80s onwards. My children (gen Z) only know metric. So, I live in kg, km and litres - except (because UK) we still have pints of beer and milk, miles to destination on road signs, miles per hour and miles per gallon. I realise, having watched this video, that I measure larger sizes in inches but finesse in mm - for some reason I find it easier to be accurate in decimal - not sure I do the conversion in my head like Adam though (barely remember to measure twice, cut once!)
As for drill presses & mills - I have a milling machine and four drill presses. One of the drill presses is permanently set up for one thing. I use the mill and the drill presses often. If I set up the mill or a drill press for a specific project, then I have another drill press available if I need it without changing the setup on the others.
I learned using metric system and one of the advantages, I think, is that you only need to divide or multiply by 10. In imperial system you have 1 mile = 1760 yards, 1 yard = 3 feet 1 foot=12 inches. To translate a mile into inches in your head you need to 1760*3*12. Probably just a question of remembering, rather then calculating though.
Now traditionally some things are measured in imperial units. The threads for pipes are often in inches (G1/2, G3/4 etc.) and I have no problem connecting them with millimeters. But if you start talking mass in ounces, or density in slug/ft3, I would need to check how much it is by checking conversion factors and doing calculations.
Just a note of caution on Drill presses vs Milling Machines, Drill presses are designed for the Load on the Spindle to be pushing into it with minimal side load, and a mill has to be able to hold the cutter up as the helix on the mill cutters pull downwards while cutting (and obviously handle a side load). ie a Drill press might not hold together properly if you are trying to mill with it. eg if you are using a morse taper setup in a drill press it may be pulled out if milling.
Adam, the neat byproduct of measuring in inches and modeling in millimeters, is retaining a 1:1 relationship. (as compelling as 1/25.4th scale is!) No math required! Fewer chances for mistakes, and easy to scale from the model to find a dimension you want.
On mill Vs. Drill press, it depends what you are doing with it. A mill vice can be very useful for precision work. Back in the 80's used one all the time to drill holes and mill out copper on copper clad board for circuit boards. It was time consuming, but made nice looking boards for prototyping. One turn for 1/10 inch made things really easy for DIP packages and other through-hole parts.
On Inches Vs. Centimeters, Inches I find Inches to be an easier to use system for building things. Fractions make it really easy to half a measurement, and for precision work we switch to mil, thousandths of an inch. Over all I find that people that understand US Customary units have no trouble at all using Metric and can switch between and convert between them with little trouble, where as metric folk can't ever seem to be able to get their head around fractional units.
Growing up in Canada we had to learn and use both metric and imperial. Learning engineering was aldo the same, plus additional conversations. Working with colleagues & clients in the UK, Canada, and US has meant using both systems of measurement-also have to be aware of the difference in the English language for the three countries.
I like the 3 times a year metric (pun not intended but glad it happened) for borrow/rent vs buying. I’ve used something similar, though the exact numbers vary with the type of tool, fir my own decisions. My only problem with a metric like this is, being a real tool junky, I often have no problem talking myself into buying a tool (the conversation with myself usually takes less than 30 seconds 😁) even if I just need it once - some tools I’ve talked myself into buying even though at the time I had no use for them at all (once having a tool, I’ve generally found a use for it within a year, but I’m sure there are a few around that I haven’t ever used).
As to imperils vs metric, I’m a retired engineer (electrical and software, not mechanical) and have to say I’m pretty comfortable with either, though having metric and imperial threads in the same item still drives me a bit nuts! You pretty have have to use imperial for construction projects (I’m not sure where you’d buy a metric stud in the US) and metric is the obvious choice for 3D printing, since all the printer parameters are I’m mm. I generally use metric for circuit boards, imperial for documents in stuff like Word or Visio, and other small projects can end up being either, depending on whether most of the parts are likely to be metric or imperial sizes. I’m getting ready to buy a mill and lathe for my garage shop, and I’m going imperils there with ones from Precision Mathew’s, but putting on DROs on both so the native system of the tools really doesn’t much matter - I expect about half the things I make on them will be in each system.
In the end, they are all just numbers, so really not a big deal except when you want to do the math in your head, and even then I don’t know if one or the other is easier, depending on the sizes of the things your working with.
I use mm for anything I design that I plan on 3D printing. If I’m replicating something, I tend to use whatever is close to the stock piece. I also use inches for carpentry, because that is what is standard around here. It’s hard for me to think in metric for anything over 2 meters.
I use mostly imperial, but with my machinist background i will do most of my math in decimal and when I am saw things to width on my table saw, then I'll use my dial caliper along with a 1 inch travel dial indicator on a magnetic base. Then I can measure my wood parts and adjust the saw fence accurately with the indicator showing me what the fence is doing.
Speaking of drill presses, I find that I need to support the table on almost all my drilling projects. I use a couple of different things. Machinists jacks work great, also I have a planer gage that I picked up along the way. Not many planers that need setting but the tapered slide works good for fine adjustments.
The reason I support the table is as the drilling pressure increases, there will be deflection in the drill press and the drill will start cutting at a slight angle. Not a big problem on wood, but try drilling through some steel and you can literally see the drill press push itself apart. Mostly it is the table not being made strong enough, even my new Nikon drill press was doing it.
That's why some people need to have a bridgeport. They are a lot more ridged in every aspect. These little combination lathe / mill things look like real pieces of crap. Most any small lathe is a piece of crap too.
Recently picked up a Powermatic 1200 myself, it's a beast. It's also very unusual to find a Powermatic in Australia. It's not my first drill press though (umm....6th) so I knew I needed a bigger one.
Adam Nice advice on the difference between a drill press and milling machine.
As a 47-year-old Canadian, I learnt metric in school, but imperial persists for many things like people and alcohol. But the big thing is that almost all carpentry and plumbing hardware in Canada is in Imperial because we're not a big enough market to be distinct from America. (And the change happened only a little before I was born, so until maybe 10 years ago the folks dominating these industries had grown up in Imperial anyway.)
The result is that many things I can estimate or intuit in both systems and will switch as convenient. Often inside the same project - I was measuring a table for a diorama once, and my notes would have things like "this feature will be 12 inches long and about 2 cm wide."
I switch between metric and inches just fine as I am fluent in both. As I use metric at work. I personally think about it this way. Imperial is best for things that are relative to human scale, imperial is essentially base 12, and 12 is divisible by 2,3,4, and 6. Where metric is base 10, so it's core unit is divisible by 2, 4, and 5.
So I use metric for precision measurements, and imperial for relative measurements.
As for drill presses, I am very happy with my Wen. Can't be at the quality and price, I would describe it a one grade above entry level but very solid for that level.
I use both as ne essary but I prefer imperial or whatever the traditional measure/unit is for the activity i'm doing because it usually is in a natural fit for that specific task.
And honestly most of the time I don't measure in units, I measure with with story sticks/story tape to get an exact size or use string or something else & bend/fold into whatever divisions i need. Super accurate & quick & i basically never need calculations, big disadvantage is passing the project off to someone else.