PEC (Products Engineering) Quality?

i have never owned any of PEC's tools and was wondering what the board members thoughts on the quality of their products were. i know my brother had some of their stuff, a couple combination squares and a center finder for round stock. i never really thought much of the look of their combination squares so i never bothered to try his out. so what is the quality out of the box and how do their tools hold up over time with usage?

I have one of their combination squares and am not really impressed. It didn't cost me much and isn't really worth much. Fit and finish isn't really very good.

I have some of their thread gauges, one vintage (~45 years old) and a couple of recent purchases.

The new ones are of reasonable quality, but the legends are difficult to read, low-contrast gray on a matte steel surface. The vintage one has good black legends.

- Leigh

I bought a PEC Acme thread gage as a temporary expedient while waiting to get a good Starrett Acme thread gage. (You may recall the saga of the 2, I repeat, two bad gages I got from MSC)

Where the Starrett was ground, the PEC was stamped. The PEC gaging surfaces still had stamping swarf (is that the right terminology). That is, the gaging surface itself had ripples and curling caused by the stamping process. It was not a precision surface, and since it was supposed to be used to gage the angles and flatness of an Acme thread bit, it would have required quite a bit of grinding and touching up to make it usable.

I have a PEC drill point gage on a 6" satin chrome rule. The graduations and the numbers are clear and visible but the slider does not move anywhere near as nicely as the Starrett one I have.

I also have a PEC "center finder" for cross drilling round stock. Fit and finish is merely OK (better than most Chinese stuff) but not much better. Good enough for drilling pipe.

I have a couple of PEC wire and sheet gages (metal disks with slots around the edge.) I am not too impressed with the fit and finish. They came from McMaster-Carr. The slots appear to be ground but I haven't checked them for accuracy.

So... in summary: PEC makes "OK" cheap, USA made tools. I don't know if all of their stuff is made in the US. They are also inexpensive as compared to Starrett, Mitutoyo, B&S.

-DU-

I have a PEC combination set. Not bad for the money and accurate enough for the woodwork side of my shop. The protractor head has a applique instead of engraved lines. Still prefer my Starretts. The scales are just easier to read.
A few years ago I ordered B & S adjustable parallel set from Travers. Apparently they screwed up the catalog, so inspite of the B & S logo, the set was PEC. They were not very parallel and one wouldn't even lock. Sent them back and ordered the B & S set, They were just as bad ( 30 year old set at work are good). I bit the bullet and paid for Starrets.

I like my PEC rigid steel rules.

for use at home i would not buy pec but at work where any tool might grow legs pec would be good enough