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Known issues for Mitutoyo HDS Digimatic height gages?

sfriedberg

Diamond
Joined
Oct 14, 2010
Location
Oregon, USA
I'm considering the purchase of an 18" height gage. I am very familiar with the Mitutoyo mechanical dial style (models 192-15x) and its many competent clones. Looks like Mitutoyo has two alternate lines, standard Digimatic (models 192-63x-10) and HDS Digimatic (models 570-31x). The standard Digimatic has a higher resolution range than the HDS Digimatic. The HDS Digimatic is significantly the least expensive of the three lines of height gages.

I don't need the 2 tenths mode of the standard Digimatic. Heck, when scribing lines for layout, I hardly need 5 tenths, considering the width of a scribe line. Are there any issues with the HDS Digimatic that I should be aware of? A Google search turned up lots of ads but very few review comments by actual users.

Mechanical robustness? Is the single column design any more prone to getting knocked out of square or producing cosine error? Accuracy? Looks like the 18" models of both Digimatic lines are accurate to 2 thou, same as the mechanical dial type.

Why is the HDS Digimatic half the price of the standard Digimatic? Other than the higher resolution mode, I don't understand what I would be giving up.
 
The HDS is made in China, which may partially explain the lower price. If you take care of it and use it in a fairly clean environment, it may last a long time. The elevation rack is made of plastic so you may lose a tooth or two if it gets dirty and the carriage is forced over the crud. I've seen a few that had the pinion shaft sheared off from operators trying to raise/lower the carriage over a dirty rack, or with the lock engaged. This single beam design is not easily knocked out of square. Hope this helps.
 
Also, these have an occasional tendency to show an intermittent "E" in the fourth decimal place. Many times this can be remedied by resetting the absolute zero.
 








 
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