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Counterfeit Mitutoyo Digital Calipers

slow-poke

Plastic
Joined
Aug 8, 2022
I imagine near everyone is aware of the cloned Mitutoyo 6” calipers, my question is have they also cloned the 8” calipers?

There are numerous tell-tale signs that are obvious when you have a fake in your hands, but when purchasing online, you often can't tell. I'm looking at an 8"

 
Dial or digital? You titled your post with dial but show digital in the video link, so what type are you really asking about?

If digital? Then when buying online from anyone, why would you suppose one seller might be vastly cheaper than all the other trusted machine tool supply company's. As you said those Mit digital's are well known to be counterfeit clones and in large numbers on Ebay and with other crooked online sellers. And it's been going on long enough that even used Mit digitals are now showing up with either the sellers not knowing they started out being counterfeit, or knowing and trying to get rid of them. Almost all reputable tool supply dealers have about the same price for those Mit digitals in any size, pinching pennies for the lowest price possible from any of them is pretty much a waste of time. So it's simple because the most logical choice is to just pick one of those trusted dealers and pay what they want to be 100% sure of getting what you want.
 
It seems like a lot of the fakes are watching these videos and looking for details to put into the next round of fakes.
AFAIK the cheap fakes haven't fixed the battery issue yet. Hook up a DMM and measure the current, the fakes have a power draw several times higher than the real ones. The real ones also cut current draw substantially when you turn off the screen. The fakes it's about the same when still running.
IFIRC it's something like 4 mA @1.5 V powered on for a real pair and 15 to 20 mA powered on or off for a fake pair.
 
I corrected the title from dial to digital.

I have one legitimate and one clone 6”. There appears to be many variations of the clones, the battery life on my clone is acceptable (about one year). However the jaws are sloppy compared to the true Mitutoyo.

There are countless videos etc highlighting the various tell-tale signs of the 6” version but I have yet to see a 8” or larger clone, was simply wondering if anyone has come upon a 8” clone?
 
I bought an 8" advertised as an Mit. for 80. The box and all the lit is as oe,even had a Mit. battery. Compared it against a known older same model and the workmanship is on par. This came from Japan.It does not have the full 4 place tenths scale just a half thou reading which is a dead giveaway for a fake.

I'm just wondering if Mitutoyo just made their own "counterfit". They could very well make a decent profit making them. I can see Mitutoyo having a hard time trying to police China goods but in country goods wouldn't be a problem as I'm pretty sure that their government is very strict about that and Mitutoyo could shut them down. Maybe if you can't beat them then join them.

I also just bought a 6" coolant proof from MSC and it is not the same as my older other two although the paper work and battery are oe. Don't know if it is just newer model with the same PN.
 
There are numerous tell-tale signs that are obvious when you have a fake in your hands, but when purchasing online, you often can't tell. I'm looking at an 8"
I bought a Mitutoyo non-digital. It had a serial number engraved on the back of the SS body and the number was laser engraved on the wood box.
And some fancy paper work in Japanese. So if the fakes are that good today it won't matter much longer. We will become hostages to foreign nations.
We could easily be flooded with all kinds of junk that keeps getting better, or as a hostage .... will accept anything that we can get and be happy with it.
I call it pandemic effect. Who cares if everything costs a lot more now, at least I'm alive. And I even got a cheap caliper with only 3 left in stock.

I recently compared a couple of Starretts to some foreign competition. The Mititoyo case included a little square wire that gets inserted into the back of the
dial to alter the pickup point for the needle. On the Starretts I have to loosen about 4 screws and move a face plate either left or right and re-tighten the screws.
When it gets way off the gear has to displaced a tooth. That is, if you like a tidy looking indicator dial with the needle at 12 o'clock.
 
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Pretty sure the 'Coolant Proof' line that are silver in color, Carbide jaw versions and the Solar powered units are not targeted for counterfeiting as they are not as common, and are a nicer calipers to use IMHO. Also, there are a lot of subtle variations of the basic model, some without the thumb wheel, some without the data link, that the CN don't bother to try and replicate, they only focus to copy the fully loaded model.

Granted none of these are going to be the cheapest you can buy (saving pennies and buying a new Mitu is sort of oxymoronic), but if you are just concerned about getting 'authentic' ones from Amazon or some other supplier with poor inventory protections, than this will increase your odds by a lot. If you are worried that you got a fake, the most definitive way is to open it up and look at the new AOS inductive pickup on the back of the circuit board, as the current line of Mitutoyo calipers use a much more complex multi-zone sensor than the clones as it is picking up readings from multiple areas on the inductive strip. The CN units pickups and the inductive strip on the body are dead simple in comparison, so if you can easily see the raised inductive areas on the strip and it isn't multiple rows of independent offset blocks but just vertical stripes, than it is a fake. Opening one up isn't too difficult (screws are under the back label) and if done carefully will not affect the unit. I should have taken a picture of the sensor itself when I had one open, but just looking at it should be enough to convince you it's legit, as even to the untrained eye it is clear there is a lot going on there.
 
I bought an 8" advertised as an Mit. for 80. The box and all the lit is as oe,even had a Mit. battery. Compared it against a known older same model and the workmanship is on par. This came from Japan.It does not have the full 4 place tenths scale just a half thou reading which is a dead giveaway for a fake.

You've got Mitutoyo calipers with tenths reading? I've never seen one. All of mine only resolve .0005" steps. All digits the same size. I have seen the fakes with a smaller ½ thou' place digit, those are easy to spot fakes if only due to that.
 
I bought an 8" advertised as an Mit. for 80. The box and all the lit is as oe,even had a Mit. battery. Compared it against a known older same model and the workmanship is on par. This came from Japan.It does not have the full 4 place tenths scale just a half thou reading which is a dead giveaway for a fake.

I'm just wondering if Mitutoyo just made their own "counterfit". They could very well make a decent profit making them. I can see Mitutoyo having a hard time trying to police China goods but in country goods wouldn't be a problem as I'm pretty sure that their government is very strict about that and Mitutoyo could shut them down. Maybe if you can't beat them then join them.

I also just bought a 6" coolant proof from MSC and it is not the same as my older other two although the paper work and battery are oe. Don't know if it is just newer model with the same PN.
Ratbldr427,
I think one of the most important defects on the clones is that the jaws are not machined in the same way, the jaws on the clone can be wiggled laterally about 1mm on the clone, while being tight on a true Mitutoyo. Are the jaws on your 8” tight or wiggly?
 
My 6" solar Mits are now about 8-9 yrs old and haven't used any of the exact same model that's newer. So I can't comment about how the new one's are now. But I'd very much agree with Bakafish and the nicer to use part. Possibly Mayr might make something comparable, but I've not had a chance to use any of there calipers yet. Both my Mit 6" & 12" dials are pretty good, but there no where near as tight yet smooth, or as repeatable as those solar's. Without question the nicest calipers I've ever used and they exceeded all my expectations.

Afaik eKretz is 100% right. I've never seen a single Mit caliper that shows that tenth digit either. 1/2 thou which mine has then yes, and that's I think universal on their digital calipers. That digit is about worthless for the already mentioned reasons. I'll use it to check the repeatability of my technique with awkward or less than ideal measurements and that there at least close to the same. While I've never once seen a pair and have only run across a few mentions of them many years ago. But apparently and around the time shortly after digital metrology instruments were getting common, Starrett "supposedly" were making a true 10ths capable set of I think 12" calipers. How they designed around the mechanical limits of standard calipers I have no idea. But the list price mentioned was $5k in the 1980's. So if they were even being made? Then few would have bought them since mikes would still be the better choice. But I've never seen further details or any pictures, it could and probably is all B.S. I'd bet someone here could say for sure though.
 
And this is a major issue today. despite supposedly stepped up Customs enforcement we have all sorts of fakes flooding the country and most come from one nation that is notorious for "******* copies" as far back as can be remembered.

I'm now beginning to suspect that my genuine "Bolex" watch might not actually be Swiss so it looks like I'm out $50 bucks. :)
 
The Op states that on Amazon these counterfeits occur. Is Amazon getting returns?

seems like Amazon would tolerate the very long.
I wish this was true, but Amazon has a long history of being unable (or unwilling) to deal with aggressive counterfeiting. Returns are the problem of the seller, and with the margins they are making and the vast majority of sales not being detected by the end users (who are often not professionals who could recognize that something isn't right), this is still a super profitable and successful scam. Even if a seller gets caught and kicked from the marketplace, they have 10 other alternate storefronts that can immediately take over. I don't envy the people at Amazon who have to deal with this, especially with so much of their business depending on these smaller (often more legitimate) CN sellers, but anyone blithely ordering a Mitutoyo caliper (or other high value counterfeit targets, I got sent fake Makita batteries once) from Amazon better double check what they get.
 
Ratbldr427,
I think one of the most important defects on the clones is that the jaws are not machined in the same way, the jaws on the clone can be wiggled laterally about 1mm on the clone, while being tight on a true Mitutoyo. Are the jaws on your 8” tight or wiggly?
The one I bought is excellent in every way and I have several genuine Mits to compare.The only difference is the .0005" scale reading is not full size, which most of the clones arn't.That is why I think somehow maybe Mits is involved .It is a 12" btw I don't know why I put 8". Probably thinking about my coolant proof 8" like new got damaged and that is why I bought the 12".
At the back of our steel rack for long material four shelves horizontal, we have some shelves for plastics. I was measuring som Delrin when some dumb sob had put a 6" piece of crs wedged in between some aluminum tube and it fell right on the scale of the 8". I saw it comming out of the corner of my eye but couldn't move quick enough
 
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I think the most important defect of the clones is that they are a $15 to $30 quality tool somebody is selling for the price of a more valuable and higher quality tool.
A 15 to $30 dollar caliper is an ok tool for that money..in a rough environment that may be the better choice
When you pay $22 for a pizza, you don't want half a pizza.
 
Mitutoyo in the past put out information on there web site and a few videos detailing tell tale signs of font type & size or mistakes on that back label on the calipers or within the manual. I think they finally gave up because the information was only accurate for a short time until those counterfeiters changed whatever mistakes were being pointed out. Since those counterfeiters are basically reverse engineering the whole thing from scratch, then getting that 1/2 thou digit correct would be a simple detail.

And extremely unlikely Mit themselves would have anything to do with producing cheaper/inferior calipers since it then dilutes there own sales in a product they obviously spent a whole lot time, effort & money to research, design and then the infrastructure to even build them. And I'd bet a whole lot of real money there's absolutely no warranty for any tool that's not a 100% genuine Mitutoyo product at there repair centers no matter how good the fake appears to be.
 
I've got one of the clones right here in my hands as I write this. It's actually a pretty decent caliper compared to some of the other cheapos I've had. Like said, the battery lasts about a year and it seems like the caliper may be starting to break down after about 5 years that I've had it. I keep it right here on the side table next to my Lazy Boy. It's pretty good for that but it's no real Mit. I think I paid around $45 on Fleabay.
 
neanderthal mach, I've wondered why the fakes don't make the full size 1/2 thou and complete the transition. I used to sell a lot of private branded auto products that came from and were identical to the name brand. The oe's justified the discount because of no advertisement budjet and no sales reps. Grocery stores are loaded with them although not as many are supplied by name brand producers.

The fact that mine say they came from Japan with a Japanese address, maybe that can be spoofed? Mitutoyo claims that they aggressively fight counterfeit products but I don't understand how they can't stop it on their homeland. Maybe the Japanese seller imported them from ???? and resold them from his address.

These days hard parts are a mixed bag. A lot of oe's switched to China mfg's and their parts are cloned by other China mfg's or else the same mfg sells to the aftermarket under a private label, who knows?

I'm not trying to shill fakes but in my case I can't justify 500 against 80 for a tool that will see little use. If I could have seen the caliper in hand it wouldn't have mattered what name it had.
 
Well with the amount of on line selling and on a global scale, Mitutoyo can only fight what they know about. With the little I understand about Japanese counterfeit laws, I'd say almost for sure that Japanese address is a fake as well. They seem to be real aggressive about protecting there known brand names within there own country because of what it does over the long term. That mistake on the half thou digit probably has something to do with costs to have the internal electronics and screen display it correctly is my best guess. But electrical and electronics are way down the list of anything I know much about.

At the end of the day caliper measurements no matter how high the accuracy & quality there made to are still at best only reliable to within a couple of thou. Maybe good enough in some cases and certainly not in others. A perception by many is any of today's digital calipers are all within what the tolerances are for caliper measurements. But that perception can send the wrong message to absolute entry level people if they don't know any better. As proof, I was given a 4"& 6" set of no name digital calipers for a couple of magazine subscriptions. Absolutely amazing just how poorly there made and the amount of grinding debris left inside them, you can even hear it just by opening and closing them. Battery life is what you'd expect as well. Just for a chuckle I checked both of them against my Mit gauge blocks and have seen as much as .015" variation on there repeatability on the exact same measurement and no two measurements are ever the same. My standards for my own wood butchery are almost better than that. So even with those counterfeits or any caliper including Mit's, Starretts, Mayr ect I think there still worth checking instead of blindly trusting anything.

But $80 fakes for the 6" calipers are still about 2/3rds of what a genuine pair would cost with a warranty that's real and repair options if it's ever needed. With all the unknowns the counterfeits have, the price difference isn't worth it to me. Everybody's opinions are different though.
 








 
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